Today I tested the AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) function in the IBM Feature Tool.
What AAM can do for you? When you activate the AAM, the noise of your harddisk will reduce to a minimum. On my test computer I could not hear the noise anymore when the harddrive reads or writes. I think it is a very cool feature when you would like to have an absolutely quiet PC. And so I asked myself: Is performance affected? I checked it with SiSoft Sandra 2002. Read on for the results.
Small introduction about the IBM Feature Tool: The IBM Feature Tool allows you to control some of the features in the newer IBM high performance ATA hard disk drives. The IBM Feature Tool allows you to: Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache. Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode). Change the predefined capacity of the drive. This option can be used in situations where there is a BIOS limitation and the drive is not recognized. See the Users Guide for specific details. Switch the Ultra DMA mode (replaces the IBMATASW utility) Change Advanced Power Mode - allows you to change between the lowest power consumption and the highest power consumption (maximum performance level). Show Drive Temperature - shows the current drive temperature in Celsius and Farenheit. I tested it with my IBM DTLA 307030 30 GB harddisk. Results: AAM not activated Buffered Read: 39 MB/s
Sequential Read: 24 MB/s
Random Read: 4 MB /s
Buffered Write: 35 MB/s
Sequential Write: 16MB/s
Random Write: 5 MB/s
access: 11 ms
Sandra points: 15407 AAM activated Buffered Read: 39 MB/s
Sequential Read: 22 MB/s
Random Read: 3 MB /s
Buffered Write: 35 MB/s
Sequential Write: 15 MB/s
Random Write: 4 MB/s
access: 19 ms
Sandra points: 14076 As you can see, I lost round about 1 megabyte performance in each test and I lost 8 ms access time. The loss of the access time is pretty high, the loss of the 1 MB performance is not so bad. But for this I got a absolute quiet harddisk and I can't hear write or read access anymore.
The IBM Feature Tool also supports a user defined AAM lever so you can define yourself the best mix between performance and noise. This tool is only for IBM Harddisks, for more information and download, head over here.
What AAM can do for you? When you activate the AAM, the noise of your harddisk will reduce to a minimum. On my test computer I could not hear the noise anymore when the harddrive reads or writes. I think it is a very cool feature when you would like to have an absolutely quiet PC. And so I asked myself: Is performance affected? I checked it with SiSoft Sandra 2002. Read on for the results.
Small introduction about the IBM Feature Tool: The IBM Feature Tool allows you to control some of the features in the newer IBM high performance ATA hard disk drives. The IBM Feature Tool allows you to: Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache. Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode). Change the predefined capacity of the drive. This option can be used in situations where there is a BIOS limitation and the drive is not recognized. See the Users Guide for specific details. Switch the Ultra DMA mode (replaces the IBMATASW utility) Change Advanced Power Mode - allows you to change between the lowest power consumption and the highest power consumption (maximum performance level). Show Drive Temperature - shows the current drive temperature in Celsius and Farenheit. I tested it with my IBM DTLA 307030 30 GB harddisk. Results: AAM not activated Buffered Read: 39 MB/s
Sequential Read: 24 MB/s
Random Read: 4 MB /s
Buffered Write: 35 MB/s
Sequential Write: 16MB/s
Random Write: 5 MB/s
access: 11 ms
Sandra points: 15407 AAM activated Buffered Read: 39 MB/s
Sequential Read: 22 MB/s
Random Read: 3 MB /s
Buffered Write: 35 MB/s
Sequential Write: 15 MB/s
Random Write: 4 MB/s
access: 19 ms
Sandra points: 14076 As you can see, I lost round about 1 megabyte performance in each test and I lost 8 ms access time. The loss of the access time is pretty high, the loss of the 1 MB performance is not so bad. But for this I got a absolute quiet harddisk and I can't hear write or read access anymore.
The IBM Feature Tool also supports a user defined AAM lever so you can define yourself the best mix between performance and noise. This tool is only for IBM Harddisks, for more information and download, head over here.
