Results Good Enough?

[Szadzik]

Hi Everyone,

I performed the full test today and looked at other results, thought mine are crap It is a laptop only, but...

Can you tell me on the basis of the hardware presented whether I need to try and enhance the performance of my computer or are the results just right for this hardware?

CPU - Integer Math 236.0
CPU - Floating Point Math 939.1
CPU - Find Prime Numbers 915.9
CPU - SSE/3DNow! 5609.4
CPU - Compression 6104.4
CPU - Encryption 34.8
CPU - Image Rotation 1150.1
CPU - String Sorting 4174.9

Graphics 2D - Lines 37.6
Graphics 2D - Rectangles 102.6
Graphics 2D - Shapes 23.8
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text 169.8
Graphics 2D - GUI 114.8

Graphics 3D - Simple 1589.3
Graphics 3D - Medium 503.6
Graphics 3D - Complex 52.5

Memory - Allocate Small Block 2121.4
Memory - Read Cached 1905.1
Memory - Read Uncached 1904.2
Memory - Write 1648.3
Memory - Large RAM 680.3

Disk - Sequential Read 611.9
Disk - Sequential Write 2.6
Disk - Random Seek + RW 114.3
CD - Read 1.6



CPU Mark 1645.8
2D Graphics Mark 320.7
Memory Mark 610.6
Disk Mark 2635.4
CD Mark 201.6
3D Graphics Mark 686.6
PassMark Rating 1226.8


HDX9250ea

Penryn 2 Duo 2.5GHz

nVidia 8800S GTS

4Gb of RAM

5400 rpm HDD

[David (PassMark)]

Anything over 1000 on the PassMark rating is OK, especially for a laptop. But the disk result is strange. The write is too low and the read to high. If you re-run just the disk test (from the menu in PerformanceTest) do you consistently get this result?

[Szadzik]

The results look strange indeed.

I tested the disk using 3 different partitions, two of them being on the same disk and third one on the 2nd disk (2x250GB built-in)

Results for the C (System) Partition

Disk - Sequential Read 571.3
Disk - Sequential Write 1.87
Disk - Random Seek + RW 114.2
Disk Mark 2486.1

Results for E (Photos) Partition

Disk - Sequential Read 44.1
Disk - Sequential Write 40.7
Disk - Random Seek + RW 2.42
Disk Mark 315.5

Results for F (Movies) 2nd Disk Partition

Disk - Sequential Read 44.2
Disk - Sequential Write 49.5
Disk - Random Seek + RW 2.55
Disk Mark 348.0

What can be causing such discrepancies? I only defragment the C Partition regularly, while the rest is probably fragmented.

Any reasons/ solutions/ suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Szadzik

[David (PassMark)]

The abnormally large seek and read figures for C: would seem to be cache related. But this doesn't explain the poor write speed. How large is partition C: and how much free space is on it?

[Szadzik]

The abnormally large seek and read figures for C: would seem to be cache related. But this doesn't explain the poor write speed. How large is partition C: and how much free space is on it?

The partition is 40GB with 65% free. Indexing turned off and compression on.

[David (PassMark)]

Do the other partitions also use compression?

[Szadzik]

Yes, all partitions are set the same

[David (PassMark)]

We have done some investigation and believe the strange results are due to compression being used on the drive. We could see the same strange behaviour here. I suspect the other partitions that reported normal looking results aren't really using compression across the entire partition.

The write speed can be awful because of the extra processing required for the compression step.

But the read speed appears to be so high because of a combination of caching and artificially high compression of the test data we are using.

We are working on a workaround for this issue for the next patch release.

[Ian (PassMark)]

The changes referred to by David for Performance measurements for disks with compression turned on are included in the new build of PerformanceTest V6.1.1016, available from:
http://www.passmark.com/download/pt_download.htm

Regards,
Ian