Comparing: Seagate Momentus ST950032-5AS vs GeForce MX350 [Disk]

Specification Comparison Table

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About Hardware Seagate Momentus ST950032-5AS

The Seagate ST9500325AS is a 500GB hard disk drive (HDD) with a 2.5-inch form factor, designed specifically for laptops, notebooks and portable devices. Utilizing a SATA II interface (3.0 Gbps) and a rotation speed of 5400 RPM, this hard drive offers a combination of low power consumption and sufficient performance for everyday computing needs, such as document storage, media, and light operating system installations.

Equipped with 8MB of buffer cache, the Seagate ST9500325AS is capable of handling basic read/write activities steadily, though not as fast as modern solid-state drives (SSDs). Nevertheless, it remains a popular choice for budget-conscious systems, secondary data storage, or upgrading storage capacity without high costs. Compared to 7200 RPM HDDs, 5400 RPM models like these also generate less heat and noise, making them suitable for laptops that prioritize comfort and power efficiency.

Technically, this HDD has an average seek time of about 12ms and is designed to support daily workloads with a high level of reliability. In our data transfer speed benchmark tests, the Seagate ST9500325AS performed as follows:

• Read Speed (Sequential Read): ~58 MB/s
• Write Speed (Sequential Write): ~62 MB/s

While its performance is far below that of SSDs, it is still relevant for basic use, especially on older systems or when large capacity is more important than speed. The Seagate ST9500325AS is also commonly found as built-in storage on previous generation laptops, and is still widely used for backups, large media file storage, and as a portable storage solution with external enclosures.

Device Test:

Device: Lenovo Sabine B475
CPU: AMD A6-3400M
GPU: IGP Radeon HD 6520G
RAM: 2GB DDR3

Thursday, 24 November 2022 09:14:30 | Update: 3 weeks 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: 2 weeks ago