Did some low-effort PCMark testing on my laptop. Focused on overall score, Productivity score (usually my favorite), and the HDD score.

Laptop specs:
Lenovo T500
2.4GHz C2D
4GB DDR2 1066MHz (dual channel)
ATi HD3650
Seagate 160GB 5400RPM 2.5" drive
Win7 x64

Tested 0 cache, 256MB L1, 512MB L1, 1024MB L1, and 2048MB L1.

Settings: read/write, 16kb blocks, LFU-R, 30s deferred write.

Each test was run three times and the average was taken. Between each size I would stop caching and restart the whole system. There was no consistent trend with run order (other than the fact that the 2nd run at each cache size was almost always worse than the 1st run). I was expecting to include graphs with how the cache gets better over time, but that just wasn't the case--maybe when it's turned on it already knows which blocks are best to cache? I'm not a storage guru, but I do know how to hit the "Run Benchmark" button







Kind of lacking the zero impact worst-case-scenario I was hoping for; also seems all the gains come from just a few tasks. Kind of blah for an end-user, unless they know they have a specific use for it, IMO.

Larger definitely seems better though....and no, I didn't really play with the settings at all, just the L1 cache size.

I can run more tests on Sunday if you guys want, just tell me what to do (as long as it's not psycho amounts of work) and I'll see if I can get it done