Test System

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 @ 3GHz (9x333MHz)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE P35-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 2x 1GB DDR2-1186 Geil (Supplied by Geil)

Graphics Card: MSI GeForce 8800GTS 640MB (Supplied by MSI)

Cooling: Stock Intel Cooler

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Drivers: Intel INF 8.3.1.1009, Forceware 163.21

Todays test system consists of a GIGABYTE P35 system that is normally used for our motherboard test bed, but we are going to be a bit different here. Our test drives comprise the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB, our Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 and our 500GB Seagate 7200.10 HDD.

Since the Momentus HDD is an IDE drive we have decided to use an IDE to SATA converter so we can hook the IDE drive onto the ICH9R's SATA ports to make the review more fair. The SATA converter only supports 150MB/s 1.0a SATA specs so it's not going to increase any speeds on the drive as the Momentus only supports 100MB/s transfer rates.

HD Tach

Version and / or Patch Used: 3.0.1.0

Developer Homepage: http://www.simplisoftware.com

Product Homepage: http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach