Comparing: WD Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX-001CA0 vs GeForce MX350 [Disk]

Specification Comparison Table

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Submission Comparison Table

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About Hardware WD Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX-001CA0

The WDC WD3200AAKX-001CA0 is a 3.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) that comes with a 320GB capacity, designed specifically for storage needs on desktop computers. Part of the Western Digital Caviar Blue family, this HDD uses a SATA-III 6Gbps interface that provides better data transfer speeds than the previous generation (SATA-II).

With a rotation speed of 7200 RPM and a 16MB buffer cache, this drive offers reliable performance for a variety of daily computing activities. From storing documents, running office applications, to playing light games, the WDC WD3200AAKX is able to accommodate the needs of home and office users with maintained stability.

It uses a single disk and two head configuration, which helps to maintain data transfer efficiency and reliability. In tests using a ThinkCentre M58 system with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 processor, 3GB DDR3 RAM, and Windows 7 operating system, the performance of this HDD was very good for its capacity class. Testing with CrystalDiskMark showed read speeds of 107.58 MB/s and write speeds of 105.50 MB/s, proving that this HDD is still relevant for legacy systems and light computing tasks today.

As part of the WD Caviar Blue line, the WD3200AAKX is designed with a blend of performance and reliability, making it a popular choice for desktop PC users who need a 7200 RPM speed drive at an affordable price. It can be used as a primary or secondary drive for legacy operating systems, data storage, or as an upgrade solution from older, lower-speed HDDs.

Device test (tesbed):

Device: ThinkCenter M58
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7500
RAM: 3GB DDR3

Tuesday, 07 March 2023 10:02:46 | Update: 1 month ago

About Hardware GeForce MX350 [Disk]

The NVIDIA GeForce MX350 is an entry-level GPU designed for thin and light laptops, delivering significant graphics performance improvements over the processor's built-in iGPU. The GPU is based on the Pascal architecture with 640 CUDA Cores, and features 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 memory with 64-bit bus width. The MX350 is generally used for light graphics tasks such as photo editing, light video, and casual gaming, and provides GPU acceleration for CUDA-enabled creative applications.

But in this particular test, a portion of the video memory (VRAM) on the GeForce MX350 was configured as a VRAMDisk. The concept of a VRAMDisk is similar to a RAMDisk, but it uses the VRAM of the GPU as a super-fast storage medium. VRAMDisk allows the creation of temporary, high-speed drives that can be utilized for technical experiments, speed testing, or graphics caching in certain scenarios. Although its capacity is limited and volatile (data is lost on reboot), the high bandwidth and low latency of VRAM provide compelling performance in certain contexts.

The tests were conducted on a Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i 14ITL6 laptop with Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 12GB DDR4 3200MHz dual channel RAM, and Windows 11 22H2 operating system. The VRAMDisk was created from a 2GB GeForce MX350 GPU, with virtual disk sizes of 1GB and 1.5GB, using special software called GPU RAM Drive.

Benchmark results with CrystalDiskMark recorded read speeds of 1113.58 MB/s and write speeds of 995.48 MB/s, showing the high bandwidth potential of VRAM as a temporary storage medium. Although the performance does not match DDR4-based RAMDisks, VRAMDisks remain a unique and attractive solution for certain technical purposes, especially for users who want to utilize idle VRAM for fast I/O processes. With its dedicated laptop GPU form factor and PCIe x4 Gen 3.0 interface, the GeForce MX350 VRAMDisk opens up new exploration possibilities in the world of experimental graphics-based high-speed storage.

Device test (testbed):

Device: Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i 14ITL6
CPU: i5 1135G7
RAM: 12GB DDR4 3200MHz Dual Channel (8+4)
OS: Windows 11 22H2

Friday, 06 August 2021 04:34:19 | Update: 1 month ago