WD's new Caviar Green Hard Drive released
"'Green' but at what cost?"
Published: 4th October 2008 | Source: Western Digital |
'Green' Storage for your PC, but at a cost.
Western Digital have released their new hard drive, called the 'Caviar Green', and available with either a 16MB or a 32MB cache. Both versions have a 1TB capacity. WD are aiming the hard drives at 'energy conscious' customers, who want to 'build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation'. So why are the drives a greener alternative to other hard drives you may ask? Well according to WD, they have reduced the power consumption of the Caviar Green by up to 40% when compared with a standard desktop drive.They say they have acheived this by using a combination of WD's IntelliSeek™, NoTouch™, and IntelliPower™ technologies.
But as with all deals in life, there is always a trade off. With the Caviar Green, performance takes a cut in favour of the green credentials. with a spindle spin speed of just 5,400 RPM. Price is also an issue, as the hard drives have a RRP of USD $219, which makes them more expensive than some faster performing drives of equal capacity. So if you are willing to lose a little performance and pay a little more for the energy conservation, then these drives may just interest you.
You can view the Caviar Green product page on the Western Digital website. You can also discuss in our forums .
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ED
You could also check some other things, try running a stability test such as Prime95 or Orthos on the CPU and RAM. I'd suggest you run a couple more tests to check the stability of your system.
Good Luck. :)
I put 2 gpuz's because there is one for each card, the settings between the two seem different?
I am running vista ultimate
all drivers bios and firmware are the latest available.
the psu was replaced for this more powerful one after someone suggested i didnt have enough power for both gfx cards, i will check out the stability tests you mention.
I used to get a 5.9 on windows exp before, then i fried a card using ntune or i think that was what done it, then after replacing the card the ram memory operations per second dropped to 5.0.
both cards now seem different in gpuz, one says nvidia and the other msi, both cards are msi? mhz also is different now
games all run ok but seem slow on max, especially crysis. I would think this setup could run any game on max, right??
I will check the benchmark you mention and see how this rates it.
Thanks a lot for all the advice
any higher AA and is unplayable.
increased fsb to 1450 linked
ram is at around 740 or something
set mem timing to 4,4,4,12, 1t at 2.5v
cpu now running at 2.9 and stable, games seem to run much smoother now.
does that sound safe? can i push it more?
cheers
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