Foxconn's WinFast 6150K8MA-8EKRS2 is one of a few boards we've tested that use nVidia's latest SATA 3Gb/s controller, perfect for measuring single-drive performance. The remaining parts provide a simple means of measurement consistency, as follows.

We used the standard suite of drive benchmarks as described in our recent article, Tools of the Trade, starting with SiSoftware's Sandra File System utility:

Buffered Read Rates put Hitachi's T7K250 in the lead, while Buffered Writes hand the title off to Samsung's SP2504C. The single drive with the best overall average here is Seagate's latest 7200.10 300GB drive. A slower SATA 150 interface handicaps Western Digital's buffered tests.

Sandra's average access times are inconclusive; the one-point difference between drives is probably a rounded fraction of a point.

Next up is c'T Magazine's H2benchw utility, which tests the unformatted drive at the lowest level to eliminate any file system preferences:

H2benchw Read Rates favor both the Hitachi T7K250 and Seagate's 7200.10, with the Samsung SpinPoint SP2504C a distant third.

Samsung makes somewhat of a comeback with low access times, but not enough to catch up to Hitachi. Western Digital makes a good showing, and Seagate falls over on write times.

Onward to Simpli Software's HD Tach, which provides a handy graph for us to see the true nature of data transfers. The following graph is compiled from several individual graphs: Click it to see two original screen shots.

Composite graph. Click to see individual drive performances.

Compiling the graphs to show all four drives together provides some interesting details: Seagate is superior across its entire 300GB, Samsung beats Hitachi while both fall off fast toward the end of the drive, and Western Digital's flatter spread show its drive to be optimized for archiving data, rather than running programs.

Seagate shows off a little more in burst speed and average read rate, while WD's cache stumbles over its SATA 150 interface once again.

Hitachi, Seagate, and Western digital are neck-and-neck in HD Tach's Read Access Times.