Before the launch of Seagate Cheetah 15K.7, very few hard drives were considered reliable for enterprise storage. This has changed altogether with the launch of 600GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS Hard Drive ST3600057SS which delivers safe and sound high capacity storage hard drive for enterprise environments.

The specifications of the cheetah 15K.7 are-
The total storage capacity is about 600 GB which reduces the storage cost per GB and increases the capacity per watt, cache – 16 MB; interface is 6-Gb/s SAS. The spindle speed is 15000 RPM, with average latency of 2.0 msec. the random read seek time is 3.4 msec, random write seek time is 3.9 sec. the height of the hard drive is around 26.10 mm, length is 146.99 mm, and is 800 grams heavy.

The key features of the model are as follows-
The cheetah 15K.7 delivers a highest performance 3.5 inch Tier 1 drive. The hard drive has the highest reliability rating in the industry. The Seagate power trim technology significantly reduces power usage. The hard drive Supports 6-Gb/s SAS 2.0 and 4-Gb/ FC.
The best fit applications of the Cheetah 15K.7 are all mainstream enterprise applications such as E-mail, business processing, internet and commerce, transaction processing, decision support, storage area networks, network attached storage etc. hence it is termed as a reliable enterprise storage package.

The key advantages of Cheetah 15K.7 are –
This is a third generation hard drive, which enables perpendicular recording for maximum capacity. This delivers an unprecedented performance with a 16 percent increase in sustained data rate as compared to the last generation. This is up to 171 MB/ sec. the Cheetah 15K.7 boosts of the industry’s highest 3.5- inch drive reliability at 1.6 –million- hours MTBF. The hard drive is available in 4 GB/s FC or 6 GB/s SAS interfaces. The hard drive makes use of power trim technology which provides up to 21% improvement as compared to the last generation in Watts/ GB when idle. There is an advanced read/ write technology which delivers an unrecoverable error rate of 1x10E16 and AFR of 0.55 percent.

Hence the Cheetah 15K.7 is the highest performing, high capacity hard drive with best in class reliability and is one of the best for enterprise environment.

It is often prescribed that Western Digital's Raptor is the perfect desktop hard drive for persons looking for a performance enhanced ambitions. Ever since western digital introduced the Raptor, it is known as the 3.5" desktop hard drive that spins at 10,000 RPM, and has eaten up the market of other 3.5” serial hard drives in the desktop space.

WD1500ADFD Raptor was released by western digital in January 2006 and features two 75 GB platters, which adds up to 150 GB. The WD1500ADFD Raptor consists of a more advanced system of native command queuing (NCQ). Hence due to this technology the Raptor is capable to increase the performance of SATA hard disks under certain situations. This allows the Raptor to internally optimize the order, which consists of read and write commands execution. This is a very good technology usage by Raptor as it reduces the amount of unnecessary drive head movement, resulting in increasing performance for multiple workloads, especially in server type applications.

The raptor is crowned as the undisputed champion in desktop hard drive arena, but at the same time it is the most expensive drive. The WD1500 Raptor uses a Serial ATA/150 interface, which is good enough. At the same time it is also noticed that more and more products run a 300 MB/s SATA interface, but still the Raptor is a stand out and no other drive outperforms it.

The access time for WD1500ADFD Raptor, 150 GB single drive including rotational latency is 8.0, whereas for 2 X 150 GB (RAID 0) is 8.1 which is impressive as compared as to other drives. The interface bandwidth time for WD1500ADFD Raptor, 150 GB single drive is 125.4 MB/s, whereas for 2 X 150 GB (RAID 0) is 194.5 MB/s.

The average read transfer rates and write transfer rates for WD1500ADFD Raptor, 150 GB single drive is 75 MB/s and 74.1 MB/s respectively and that for 2 X 150 GB (RAID 0) is 149.7 MB/s and 142.8 MB/s respectively.

The Windows XP startup performance and the Windows boot time for WD1500ADFD Raptor, 150 GB single drive is 11.3 MB/s and 21.3 seconds whereas for 2 X 150 GB (RAID 0) is 14.7 MB/s and 21.4 seconds respectively.

The WD Raptor holds its place as the fastest serial ATA desktop hard drive but at the same time it comes with a high price tag and covers a five year warranty.

As with the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the 4850 X2 is a dual designed chip 3D card. Powered by two Radeon HD 4850 GPUs, the X2 version is effectively a self-contained Crossfire setup. It only needed to be connected by this card directly to your PC power supply via one six-pin and one eight-pin PCI Express power input and as a double-wide card, considering a fair amount of space inside your PC. Designed by SAPPHIRE for the new HD 4850 X2 comprises two complete HD 4850 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip, each GPU having 800 stream process units and a 256-bit memory interface driving 1GB of GDDR3 memory, making a total of 2GB on-board memory. Four Dual Link DVI outputs provided for purpose as well as for TV-Out. This makes a choice of Multi-monitor operation or CrossFire mode in which 3D applications such as games use both on-board GPU’s together to deliver a single accelerated output on the Primary display with industry leading levels of performance.

Some special attractions involves 2 GB or 1GB of GDDR3 memory and 2.0 Tera FLOPS of GPU powerDirectX10.1 and PCI Express,2.0 support 1600 stream processing units and 2 x 256-bit memory interface ,24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering Dual mode, ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance ,Dynamic geometry acceleration and DVD Up scaling Game physics processing capability or Dynamic Contrast ATI Avivo HD video and display technology and Dynamic power management with ATI Power Playtechnology.It also shows unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) for Blu-ray and HD Video Accelerated Video Trans coding(AVT) with Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support.

However, while putting a game on one screen and a Web-based map and a walkthrough on the others. An idea rises of showing a spreadsheet, e-mail, and multiple Web pages at the same time will make many office functionaries drool. With each port dual-link DVI is enabled, which unable to connect four 30-inch LCDs to one Radeon HD 4850 X.There is a possibility to test four 30-inchers, but we were pleased with the experience of connecting the 24-inch, 22-inch, and pair of 19-inch displays we had on hand. Finally, being a member of AMD's Radeon HD 4000-series, this card has all of the DirectX 10.1, stream processing with Havok Physics acceleration inherent to all the chips in that family. When actually seeing these features have a widespread software impact, we'll be sure to write about them.

Like most of graphic cards, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Super clocked is a double-wide card that connects directly to your PC's power supply, in such case via two six-pin PCI Express power connectors are required Unlike the midrange card from ATI, Radeon HD 4850 X2, competing  for, this EVGA card has only a single 3D chip. The only NVIDIA dual chip card has very high end GeForce GTX 295, but it's certainly not the most affordable product out there, nor is it appropriate for those of with smaller monitors. According to the charts, regardless of the number of GPUs onboard, the GTX 260 Core 216 isn't quite up to par with the other cards at or around this price otherwise from the same edition EVGA's Superclocked edition of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 9800+ is a fast 3D graphics card is better option to have with an affordable price. While on the other hand some expect it to play most current PC games at smooth frame rates, especially on lower resolutions.

EVGA will offer three Core 216 models:

• GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
• GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked
• GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 HC16 (water-cooled)

Some people compete with the speeds development but in this case ATI’s introduction of their new 4800-series which has prompted a lightning quick response from NVIDIA. Not only have  price  has drastically cut of their GTX 280 and GTX 260 cards but it seems like they are now allowing manufacturers to release "upgraded" versions of the GTX 260. This card will be probably meant to store up the GTX 260’s performance against ATI’s HD 4870 in the short term with an extra 24 Stream Processors to give it a helping hand.
Now that whole topic is covered with a bit of the background, let’s try focusing on the product being reviewed today: the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition. Even though its name is a small, this card carries with it all the usual reasons to buy EVGA which includes a lifetime warranty and access to their Trade-Up Program. Taking all things in consideration, this is the same price as some HD 4870 cards are still going for so it should be very interesting if the overclocked core and the extra Stream Processors are able to give it an edge.