Testing and Results
I used the following computer to test this SSD:
- Intel Core i7 2600K CPU
- Gigabyte P67a-UD4 Motherboard
- G.Skill Ripjaws-X 2133-7-10-7 Ram.
- Antec HCP-850W PSU
- Samsung Spinpoint F1 mechanical HDD.
It’s a solid box with excellent SATA3(6Gbps) performance, it should be able to drive this SSD to it’s maximum potential. Please note that if you use the drive on a SATA2 (3Gbps) port it will work fine, but will not be able to perform as fast due to SATA2’s limited bandwidth.
The following benchmarks were used:
- ATTO Disk Benchmark
- AS SSD Benchmark
- HD Tach
- CrystalDiskMark
- PCMark05
HD Tach and PCMark05 are the odd benchmarks, HD Tach is quite good for mechanical drives, but somewhat less useful for SSDs. I am including it anyway to show one of the main differences between SSDs and mechanical disks: SSDs don’t slow down due to sector placement. PCMark05 is a fairly obscure benchmark that is included for the benefit of extreme benchers, it’s results are really only relevant to itself. CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD and ATTO are excellent SSD benchmarks with no disclaimers.
I ran everything except for PCMark05 twice, once with the SSD totally empty and the computer booting from the mechanical HDD, and once with Windows installed to the SSD and booting from the SSD. Some SSDs slow down with any data in them, so I wanted to test both scenarios.
In all cases below, the empty benchmark screenshot comes first.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
277 MB/s write and 544MB/s read while the drive is empty, that is substantially over the 260/415MB/s in the specifications!
With windows installed on the drive that drops to 232-270MB/s and 440-540MB/s, that’s still quite fast, and at or above the spec by and large. Very nice! Interestingly the small transfer size numbers got better with some stuff on the drive. Don’t know why to make of that, but it is excellent news.
AS SSD Benchmark
Similar results here, the write speed takes the largest hit from windows being installed, and it’s still blindingly fast.
HD Tach 8MB
HD Tach 32MB
See those flat lines? It’s a far cry from mechanical SSD’s downward curve.
CrystalDiskMark
More downright smoking results! Windows on the drive puts a dent in the results, as seen previously.
PCMark05
Benchmark thoughts
Across the board the Crucial M4 256GB SSD stomped it’s spec while empty, and still stomped it’s spec with win7 64bit pro installed on it. That is what I call impressive!
The write speeds take a hit with windows installed, but >200MB/s is still far from slow, and is easily the fastest I have ever used personally. Interestingly the ATTO results with small data sizes went up substantially when I installed windows 7 on the drive. I’m at a loss to explain it, but there you go.
On the entirely subjective “how does it feel?” test, the drive is fantastic, programs load almost instantly, windows loads in a very short time indeed, I love it!
The PC05 results are excellent as well, just under the 220MB/s cap for XP Startup on HWBot.org with a single drive? Awesome!
