hi everyone!
had the hitachi travelstar 7200 at home form my old notebook - so decided to find out how much the performance difference would be. i mirrored the hdd image from my 8104 to the hitachi drive using norton ghost 9. i use the original installation with the stock driver.
i also wanted to find out if undervolting using rmclock would cause a performance loss - so i did tests with and without undervolting.
i used sisoft sandra, pcmark04 and hd tune to get comparable results - so here they are:

Hitachi Travelstar 7200 Rpm


SiSoftware Sandra (undervolted, max. performance)

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
Combined Index : 10819 (total)

CPU Multi-Media Benchmark
Combined Index : 39645 (total)

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Combined Index : 5662 (total)

File System Benchmark
Combined Index : 30722 (total)



SiSoftware Sandra (max. performance)

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
Combined Index : 10891 (total)

CPU Multi-Media Benchmark
Combined Index : 39786 (total)

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark.
Combined Index : 5565 (total)

File System Benchmark
Combined Index : 30101 (total)

*****

PCMark 2004

max. performance undervolted

PCMark: 3852
CPU: 3757
Memory: 3178
Graphics: 3241
HDD: 3507

max. performance:

PCMark: 3943
CPU: 3839
Memory: 3205
Graphics: 3285
HDD: 3491

*****

HD tune 2.10

Minimum: 16.4 MB/sec
Maximum: 38,2 MB/sec
Average: 29,3 MB/sec

Access Time: 14,2 ms
Burst Rate: 80,0 MB/sec
CPU Usage: 100% (??)

____________________________________________________

Travelmate 8104 native configuration

SiSoftware Sandra

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
Combined Index : 10885 (total)

CPU Multi-Media Benchmark
Combined Index : 39912 (total)

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Combined Index : 5700 (total)

File System Benchmark
Combined Index : 33081 (total)

*****

PCMark04:

PCMark: 3846
CPU: 3719
Memory: 3119
Graphics: 3296
HDD: 3042

*****

HD tune 2.10

Minimum: 19,4 MB/sec
Maximum: 38,3 MB/sec
Average: 30,7 MB/sec

Access Time: 16,9 ms
Burst Rate: 75,7 MB/sec
CPU Usage: 4,4%

____________________________________________________

after all those tests i seams clear that the harddrive is no bottleneck in the system. it nearly works as fast as the 7200 rpm drive, is cooler and quieter aswell. my decission is made - i stick to the original 100gb hdd.
other than that is seems like that undervolting the cpu does cause a reduction in speed of the cpu und memory bandwith - it's not very big but it exists. i'm still sticking to undervolt my notebook vor it runs an average of about 10c° cooler under full cup load - that's worth it for me.

hope this answers some questions
greetings
gernot

Wow, quite an effort to test various configurations. Thank you very much for sharing this with us!

i believe for a 5400 hard drive that it is
it's fairly fast and can keep up with everything!

VERY interesting

Ha,

This seals things for me, I know that the Acer 8104 will meet my needs. With undervolting the heat/noise should be addressed

glad i could help!
under normal workload, office programms, surfing etc, on an undervolted laptop with rmclock on automatic managment the fan comes up every 8 - 10 minutes for 2 - 4 minutes. that's at least my heat'n noise experience..
but as it looks to me - all the notebook with comparable capabilities have the same problem with heat - if i ever find out about a notebook that doesn't - i'll buy it

Thanks for sharing your results with us. I was wondering for games, how much faster would the 7200 load the game vs the 5400?

Probably close to equal. The 7200rpm should have faster seek times, but the higher areal density of the 100Gb 5400rpm disk should give it higher sustained throughput. Just about what the tests in the first post showed.

well done Gernot, you deserve a prize for doing that

I have the slower drive in my 8103 (4200rpm)

I wonder how it figures under these test...................