Can a Raptor really be this much faster?

[gimpyviper]

Ok guys, this is bit of a long story but follow me and see if you come up with the same conclusions I did.

 

I have two machines running uphuck's 10.4.9. An IBM ThinkCenter A50p here at work which is based on an Intel 865GKD board. At home I have a Tyan Thunder K8WE using Nforce 4 Pro.

 

Both originally were installed onto Maxtor 80GB IDE drives. (NForce older Maxtor, IBM newer, but this is irrelevant)

 

Once I got install working, I decided to switch to SATA. My computer at home is more important so I got a second Raptor X to go with it, (first one is for XP) One at work I just used a Segate 7200.7 Barracuda.

 

When I switched the IBM to the Barracude it felt slower. Noticeably. Did some XBenching of the drives only and came up with a whole point difference between the Maxtor IDE and the Seagate SATA. So I had some SATA->IDE adapters lying around, popped one on. The Seagate improved but was still behind the Maxtor, so I left the Maxtor as root and just installed the Segate as a data drive with the adapter on it. The Maxtor got a 8.20 overall disk score. The Seagate a 7.20 SATA and 7.80 with SATA->IDE adapter.

 

I decided to check my system at home with the Raptor X. Now bear in mind, I've had issues getting OS X to boot from NForce SATA so I just used one of those adapters which supports UDMA 133 which my board does as well. So the Raptor X isn't even running at full potential. Nevertheless it still posted an overall disk score of 82.52. 10x faster than the faster Maxtor drive on the IBM.

 

Now I know the Raptor is good. But 10x as good? That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Even factoring into it different controllers and more memory on the Nforce... 10x? I would expect all things being ideal there to be a 3-5x TOPS.

 

10x??

 

I don't think it's the Raptor X on the NForce blowing away the Maxtor/Segate on the IBM. I think the IBM's Intel controller must be having some type of issue limiting it.

 

Do you guys agree with my logic?

 

Is there a BIOS setting I should look for or a driver fix?

 

EDIT - NEVERMIND, problem solved! Patched and got a result of 55.79 for the Maxtor.