How We Test, System Specs

The Intel SSD 510 Serial 120GB, OCZ Vertex 3, Crucial RealSSD C300 and others feature SATA 6Gb/s connectivity, requiring us to test using the Sandy Bridge (LGA1155) platform. All other 3Gb/s drives were tested on our older LGA1366 platform, but this shouldn't affect the results. A few select SATA 3Gb/s drives were tested on our LGA1155 system to check for accuracy, both synthetic and real-world performance were much the same.

In add-on to our featured flash devices, the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB 3.five" 7200RPM hard drive has been included for comparison's sake. Other SSDs tested for comparison feature controllers such as the SandForce SF-1200, JMicron JMF616, Intel PC29AS218A, Marvell 88SS9174, Toshiba TC58NCF618GBT and Samsung S3C29MAX01. Our testing suite consists of four synthetic benchmark programs and our own file copying and load time tests.

Equally you probable know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Different a conventional hard bulldoze, whatever write functioning made to an SSD is a two-step procedure: a information block must be erased and and so written to. Obviously if the bulldoze is new and unused in that location will be zero to erase and therefore the first pace can be bypassed, just this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed.

Considering this, we'll test how much performance you tin look to lose over time. We'll examine all drives in their clean, unused state, and and then run the Hd Tach total criterion several times to make full the entire drive. This simulates heavy usage and clearly indicates of how performance will be affected after normal long-term use. All the drives in this roundup support the Windows 7 TRIM function, which is meant to annul these negative effects.

Test Organisation Specs
- Intel Cadre i7-2600K (LGA1155)
- x2 4GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Asus P8P67 Deluxe (Intel P67)
- OCZ ZX Serial (1250w)
- Intel SSD 510 Series 120GB
- Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
- Asus GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB)

Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware 270.51