Business and High End Disk Winmark

The K7 performed well in the next two tests, which involved the disk subsystem. The Business Disk Winmark and High End Disk Winmark tests are synthetic tests that measure the performance of the disk subsystem. Synthetic tests approximate the performance of a specific subsystem.

In the Business Disk Winmark, we see the K7 taking about a 13% margin, at 3,440, over the nearest competitor, which was the PIII 500 at 3,050. Similarly, in the High End Disk Winmark we see the K7 scoring a whopping 12,100, over the next higher 9,290 achieved by the PIII Xeon 500 with 1MB L2 cache. The PIII was not far behind with 9,200. At first glance, one would think that the IBM Deskstar 7,200 RPM drive would be the factor in getting the K7 to its position, until it's realized that the PIII and PIII Xeon were using an IBM 7,200 RPM Fast Wide SCSI drive. So what gives?

The mystery

Well, as stated before the K7 is on a significantly different architecture. This is the easy way out of answering this puzzle, but unfortunately, it may be a quite valid answer. The K7 has been reported to have "7th Generation Data Bandwidth", which is a function of the CPU architectural changes as well as the EV6 bus.

The 200 MHz EV6 bus is quite a wonder in its own right. With its PTP (Point To Point) topology, it can address the various subsystems separately. This means that you can run 100 or 200 MHz RAM, while simultaneously powering various cards at other speeds. This is currently achieved through ratio settings for the AGP and PCI buses, but can be addressed by the PTP bus directly. So, who can explain the mystery of the high disk performance?