Comparing: Seagate Momentus Thin ST320LT012-9WS14C vs AMD Radeon HD 7310 IGPU VRAM Disk

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About Hardware Seagate Momentus Thin ST320LT012-9WS14C

Seagate ST320LT012-9WS14C is a 320GB capacity hard disk drive (HDD) with a slim 2.5-inch form factor, ideal for laptops, notebooks and other portable systems. Designed using a SATA II (3Gbps) interface and a rotation speed of 5400 RPM, this HDD emphasizes power efficiency and quieter operation compared to higher-speed HDDs.

It uses 1 platter and 2 read/write heads, a common configuration for 320GB capacity, with light weight and low power consumption-suitable for mobile devices. Equipped with 16MB of buffer cache, its performance is sufficient for daily tasks such as saving documents, running light applications, or storing multimedia files.

This Seagate ST320LT012-9WS14C performance test was conducted using an HP 1000 1b05AU laptop that still relies on 4GB DDR3 Single Channel RAM with two DIMM slots. The operating system used during the test was Windows 7 64-bit, which is a typical environment for entry-level laptops in this era of HDD usage. The hardware combination reflects the real usage scenarios of older generation laptop users who still rely on mechanical hard disks as the primary storage medium.

In tests using CrystalDiskMark benchmark software, the Seagate ST320LT012-9WS14C hard disk recorded a fairly stable performance for the 5400 RPM HDD class. The sequential read speed reached 84.67 MB/s, while the sequential write speed stood at 83.84 MB/s. These results show that despite being an older generation HDD with modest specifications, its performance is still adequate for everyday light computing needs such as document storage and media playback.

Although its performance falls short of modern SSDs, the Seagate ST320LT012-9WS14C remains a reliable and cost-effective choice for users who need additional internal storage on older laptops, educational systems, or as external media (with a USB case). Its compact size and low power consumption also make it suitable for use in netbooks and other energy-efficient devices.

Device Test:

Device: HP 1000 1b05au
RAM: 4GB DDR3 Single Channel 2 DIMM
OS: Windows 7

Wednesday, 26 December 2012 14:27:32 | Update: 3 weeks ago

About Hardware AMD Radeon HD 7310 IGPU VRAM Disk

The AMD Radeon HD 7310 is an integrated GPU (iGPU) based on the Terascale 2 architecture embedded in some early generation E1 series APUs, such as the AMD E1-1200. With 80 Stream Processors, this GPU is designed for light tasks such as video playback, basic computing, and casual gaming with low graphics settings. Despite being an entry-level GPU and being quite old, the Radeon HD 7310 is still able to operate well for basic needs and certain technical experiments.

In this test using an HP 1000 1b05au device paired with an AMD E1-1200 processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, and Windows 7 operating system, an interesting experiment was conducted by converting part of the VRAM allocation into a VRAMDisk using specialized GPU RAM Drive software.

VRAMDisk is a method that utilizes VRAM capacity as high-speed temporary storage, just like RAMDisk but with graphics memory. In this configuration, of the total VRAM of 384MB (plus shared memory), about 128MB was set aside to be used as a VRAMDisk. Despite the small capacity, the read and write speeds were quite surprising:

• CrystalDiskMark:
  • Read: 393.23 MB/s
  • Write: 393.66 MB/s

This figure shows that even using an older generation GPU with DDR3 memory and a 128-bit interface, the VRAM still has enough bandwidth for light cache tasks or fast storage experiments. This technology is not intended for daily use, but it can be an interesting alternative for technical purposes, testing, or short-term local access speeds of small files.

Given its limitations-both in terms of VRAM capacity, iGPU performance, and modern driver support-the AMD Radeon HD 7310 is definitely not an option for gaming or heavy workloads right now. However, experiments like this VRAMDisk show that legacy devices can still be creatively utilized in certain contexts, especially in resource-constrained environments.

Device test (testbed) :

Device: HP 1000 1b05au
Software: GPU Ram Drive
CPU: AMD E1-1200
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7310 (Integrated)
RAM: 4GB DDR3 Single Channel 2 DIMM 1066MHz
OS: Windows 7

Wednesday, 26 December 2012 14:27:32 | Update: 2 weeks ago