To test the card we compared it with the Advansys IEEE1394/PCI adapter card. While running
benchmarks for data transfer on a device hooked up to each of these IEEE1394
adapter cards we were able to gauge how well they performed. Also, timed data
transfer tests were performed with ~2.0GB files being transferred from an internal
drive through the PCI cards to the test device, and external hard drive.
|
Advansys |
|
Evergreen |
Test |
Slot 2 |
Slot 1 |
Slot 1 |
Slot 3 |
Slot 2 |
Drive Index |
5721 |
5420 |
2764 |
2678 |
2729 |
Min Disk Cache |
8MB |
8MB |
8Mb |
8Mb |
8MB |
Buffered Read |
221Mb/s |
357Mb/s |
160Mb/s |
160Mb/s |
463MB/s |
Sequential Read |
6Mb/s |
6Mb/s |
2764Kb/s |
2700Kb/s |
2736Kb/s |
Random Read |
4Mb/s |
4Mb/s |
2347Kb/s |
2176Kb/s |
2308KB/s |
Buffered Write |
12Mb/s |
13Mb/s |
31Mb/s |
152MB/s |
32Mb/s |
Sequential Write |
5Mb/s |
6Mb/s |
3000Kb/s |
2949Kb/s |
2934Kb/s |
Random Write |
9Mb/s |
7Mb/s |
4Mb/s |
4Mb/s |
4066Kb/s |
Avg. Access Time |
4ms |
4ms |
4ms |
6ms |
4ms |
|
The Drive Index rating for the Hot
Drive while connected through the Advansys IEEE1394 card posted about
twice as well as with the adapter card Evergreen ships. The value of 5700
lies way below the actual representation of this drive
however. |
|
Sandra benchmarks with the Evergreen
IEEE1394 card posted lower values than with the Advansys Card, but both
values were still substantially out of step with the actual performance of
the Hot Drive. |
The timed trials
show that the Evergreen IEEE1394 adapter card performed slightly lower than that of the reference Advansys IEEE1394 card. A
time of about 10.5min was the average for it to transfer the ~2.0Gb file. The reference
card posted times a few minutes faster, but the Evergreen still performed slightly better
than that of an internal drive to internal drive transfer.
IEEE1394 card |
Evergreen |
Advansys |
Internal |
Test |
fujitsu-HotDrive |
Maxtor-HotDrive |
Maxtor-HotDrive |
Fuji-HotDrive |
Maxtor-Fujitsu |
time |
10min |
11min |
6min |
9.5min |
12min |
Size |
1.9Gb |
1.9GB |
1.9Gb |
1.9GB |
1.9GB |
Rate |
3.2Mb/s |
~3Mb/s |
5.2Mb/s |
3.3Mb/s |
2.6Mb/s |
While the Evergreen IEEE1394 adapter card didn't quite fair as well as the reference system in Sandra, or
in the timed trials, it still posted better values than the comparative
internal drive to internal drive data transfer.
The Evergreen IEEE1394 PCI adapter
card is based on a dual Texas Instruments chipset
supporting 100Mbit/s, 200Mbit/s, and 400Mbit/s data transfer. One chip handles the 1394 OHCI and the other handles the
dataflow through the cable ports. In comparison the reference IEEE1394 adapter card
integrated all procedures into a single chip design.
Dual chip or single chip design, what is the difference?