Raptor 150 GB vs Caviar 750 GB Performance Test

System  

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (reference 2.4 GHz clock).
• 4 GB DDR2-800 RAM (4 x 1 GB, dual-channel).
• Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 (Intel P965 chipset, F12 BIOS, latest chipset drivers).
• nVidia 8800 Ultra, nVidia reference clocks, Forceware 163.75.
• Windows XP SP2 Pro 32 bit.
• Western Digital Raptor 150 GB.
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 750 GB.

Methods   

• Both drives were copies of each other (i.e. all of my games).
• Both drives were defragmented before testing.
• After testing one drive I rebooted the system to eliminate caching.
• The tests were taken by stop-watch from the time I hit “load” to when the game returned control to me.
• All results are in seconds, so lower scores are better.
• Allow a +/- 1 second margin of error.