Performance Testing and Results
I used the following system to test the performance:
| CPU: | Intel Core i7 3770k @ 4GHz |
| RAM: | Crucial Ballistix Tactical 2x8GB 1600-8-8-8 1.35v |
| Motherboard: | Gigabyte Z77x-UP4-TH |
| GPU: | MSI 4670 GDDR3 |
| Storage: | OCZ Vertex 3 3.5″ 120GB for empty tests OCZ Agility 4 256GB |
| PSU: | Antec HCP-750 |
| Case: | Motherboard tray benching station, ripped out of an old case |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate x64 |
Onward to results! For each benchmark I will first show the results with a completely empty partition on the drive, then with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installed on the drive and booting off the drive.
ATTO
ATTO is a highly threaded benchmark that queues requests up, so the drive knows not only what it needs to do now but also what is coming.
420MB/s read and 411MB/s write! You can really see the 512MB of cache in the write results.
Win7 being on the drive puts a real damper on the read results. I had one run with a spike to >400MB/s in read on a single subtest, three successive runs give the results above. Still, 409MB/s write and 259MB/s read is quick.
AS SSD
AS SSD doesn’t queue things, so the controller has to operate in the dark essentially. This makes it a tougher benchmark.
You can see the difference a queue makes! Both between AS SSD and ATTO, and between the 4K and 4K 64Thrd results, 64 threads for queueing on the second. This is a respectable score, especially at this price level. It brutalizes the previous generations of mid range drives.
AS SSD remains largely unchanged, which is nice to see. Quick.
Crystal Disk Mark x64
Similarely to AS SSD, Crystal Disk Mark mostly deals with no-queue operations.
We continue to see similar results regardless of what is thrown at this drive. They’re all good, too.
Reads took a bit of a hit, but not as large as the hit in ATTO.
PCMark05
PCMark05 is almost useless as a benchmark comparing drives. It is, however, a competition benchmark with a storage section. As such I’m including it in this review for the competitive benchmarkers of the world.
Not a PCMark05 competition drive, this. That’s not surprising as PC05 really likes Sandforce controllers, far more than any others.
All told the benchmarks are pretty good for a mid range drive costing significantly less than $1/GB.
