In an interesting testament to differences between benchmarks,
IOMeter's hierarchy of drives is the reverse of that presented by
WinBench 99. That is, Intel's benchmark rates the
Cheetah 18XL as the fastest drive, the IBM trailing slightly behind, with the
Atlas 10k II lagging further still.
Under a Linear Workstation load (admittedly a scenario too simplistic to occur in real-world usage), the Ultrastar 36LZX pulls ahead of the Cheetah 18XL by a margin of nearly 4%. On the other hand, under Very Light and Light loads, IBM's offering trails that of Seagate's by 4%. The differences narrow under Moderate and Heavy loads... in Moderate cases, the Ultrastar trails the Cheetah by 1%. Heavy loads result in a dead heat.
The 36LZX does get to flex its muscles in IOMeter when compared to the Atlas 10k II. In such a face off, the Ultrastar leads the Atlas by margins in many cases approaching 8%.
Though our focus is primarily on Workstation performance, we also keep performance figures for File Server and Database scenarios. In such cases, the IBM drive lags behind the offerings from Seagate and Quantum. For full details, check out the StorageReview.com Database!
Conclusion...
