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After a period of time the SSD cache is going to be accessed quite frequently, and this has other advantages. Right now Cachecade is a read-only layer, so it might not be easy to understand the tremendous benefits that it has in regards to write performance on the HDD array. By freeing up the HDD from the most constantly addressed …

CacheCade performance is much more dependent on SSD read performance than on SSD write performance, so the performance depends upon the size of the SSDs and the total size of the data hot spots. If there simply aren’t many hot spots on the array being accelerated, you will not gain as large of a performance gain. Once again, in our …

This is the Test Bench and a quick click will display it close up.  As you may have guessed, it truly is no ordinary Test Bench, and I have dedicated many many hours creating this build, which has been used in many benchmarking excursions and extreme overclocking sessions. She has even set a few HWBot world records along the way! …

This is the single source test. The straight read testing just uses a single test file of 50GB that is read from the array as a 4k (aligned) Random Read pattern, at a Queue Depth of 32.  With this test it is showing the absolute best case scenario, results are usually going to be 2x of the more demanding zoned …

Zoned Setup- A more complex read pattern that is much more demanding of the caching algorithm. The overlapped cold-cool-warm-hot data regions IOMeter benchmark is the most stressful on the hot data caching algorithms and so results typically reach performance in the 30,000 to 45,000 IOPS range. The base array in this scenario is generating around 500 IOPS before acceleration, which …

ADDED VALUE During testing,  one thing that struck me was the sound of the drives, once they were loaded with information and being tested. The 4k random read is one of the hardest types of file access for any storage solution, especially Hard Disk Drives. At the beginning of each test, sitting in the room I could hear the sound …

Final Words and Conclusion With the introduction of Sandy Bridge at the beginning of 2011, consumers who could not wait for Z68 had to make two choices in terms of their motherboard chipset: H67 for GPU functionality, or P67 for overclockability. Ironically, due to the mishaps of the Cougar Point chipset, the mass recall of H67 and P67 motherboards gave most …

BIOS and Overclocking Of the two things that worried me about the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, the main one was the BIOS. As manufacturers such as MSI, ASUS, and ASROCK have started promoting their UEFI-only BIOS, I wondered if Gigabyte had done the same, and if they had done it right. As we can see, Gigabyte has done a terrific job with their UEFI …

Temperature, Power, and Efficiency The Z68X-UD3H-B3 yielded some excellent results when it came to overall efficiency: The Dynamic Energy Saver 2 feature also contributed its fair share to keep the entire system as adept as possible: NEXT: BIOS and Overclocking Page 1: Introduction Page 2: Specifications, Overview, and Features Page 3: Closer Look, Specifications, and Benchmark Testing Platform Page 4: CPU Benchmarks Page 5: Computation and …

Z68 Chipset-Specific Benchmarks LucidLogix Virtu In a nutshell, Virtu is software developed by LucidLogix that allows the use of a dedicated GPU and the CPU’s integrated GPU (as present on Sandy Bridge processors) simultaneously. There are three modes of operation: ‘Off’ (use of dedicated GPU only; integrated GPU is not being used), ‘i-Mode’ (integrated), and ‘d-mode’ (dedicated). ‘i-Mode’ is limited to …

Overall System Benchmarks Futuremark 3DMark 11 Professional Edition 3DMark 11 is the latest version of the worlds most popular benchmark for measuring the graphics performance of gaming PCs. Designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX …

Gaming Benchmarks Crysis: Warhead In Crysis Warhead, players will don the Nanosuit of Sergeant Sykes, also known as ‘Psycho’, one of the most memorable characters from Crysis. More brash and aggressive than his Delta Force squadmate Nomad, players will experience Psycho’s parallel story during the events of the original game, finding that life on the other side of the island is …

Memory Benchmarks SiSoftware Sandra Professional Business Edition SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information and diagnostic utility. It provides most of the information (including undocumented) needed by testing hardware, software and other devices. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level, Sandra presents information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, …

Storage and Peripheral Benchmarks CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for hard drives (as well as flash drives) that enables rapid measurements of sequential and random read/write speeds. The USB 2.0 test was performed using the 64GB Patriot SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash drive: The USB 3.0 test was performed using the 64GB Patriot SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash drive: The …

Computation and Productivity Benchmarks 7-Zip 64-Bit Edition 7-Zip is an open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, and can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or Windows shell integration. Sorenson Squeeze 7.0 Sorenson Squeeze is a compression suite for video. It encodes to multiple …