WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD Review

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Our Test MethodologiesUnder each test condition, the Solid State Drives tested here were installed as secondary volumes in our testbed, with a standard spinning hard disk for the OS and benchmark installations.  The SSDs were left blank without partitions wherever possible, unless a test required them to be partitioned and formatted, as was the case with our ATTO benchmark tests. And all drives were secure erased prior to the start of the tests. Windows firewall, automatic updates and screen savers were all disabled before testing. In all test runs, we rebooted the system and waited several minutes for drive activity to settle before invoking a test.

HotHardware Test System
Intel Core i7 Powered

Processor -

Motherboard -


Video Card -

Memory -


Audio -

Hard Drives -

 

Hardware Used:
Intel Core i7 965


Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme
(X58 Express Chipset)


GeForce GTX 280

6144MB Corsair DDR3-1333
CAS 7


Integrated on board

WD SiliconEdge Blue
Micron C300 256GB
OCZ Vertex Turbo Series 120GB
Intel X25-M Gen2 160GB

OS -
Chipset Drivers -
DirectX -

Video Drivers
-


Relevant Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate
Intel 9.1.1.1025 w/ Matrix Storage
DirectX 11

NVIDIA ForceWare v196.34

Benchmarks Used:
HD Tach v3.0.1.0
ATTO v2.41
CrystalDiskMark v3
PCMark Vantage
SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4

 

 IOMeter
 I/O Subsystem Measurement

In the following tables, we're showing two sets of access patterns with IOMeter; one with an 8K transfer size, 80% reads (20% writes) and 80% random (20% sequential) access and one with IOMeter's default access pattern of 2K transfers, 67% reads and 100% random access.

IOMeter had the new WD SiliconEdge Blue SSD trailing the rest of the pack across the board. In both the default access pattern and our custom workstation pattern, the SiliconEdge Blue just missed the mark set by the OCZ Vertex 120GB in almost every category except for maximum response time, where the WD drive trailed significantly.

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*UPDATE*
The controller is a JMicron JMF612 with a custom bios.  You can buy drives using this chip for less than $2.20 @ GB and WD is asking double that.

The bios has been tuned for compatability at the cost of some performance compared to other JMF612 and JMF618 based drives.  Considering what the company WD bought used to build, I can see them making that tradeoff.  I wouldn't trust a JMicron controller though.

The cache is 64MiB of DDR2-800 ram.  Crazy fast right there, to the tune of x4 or more over most other drives.

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I agree on the Jmicron point I am just glad to see this market. Just like the smart phone market, it is becoming more and more flooded. Which in the end means better performance, availability, and competitive prices for us. This is especially true with large trusted storage players like WD.

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I'm still waiting on SSDs to drop in price. This one seems to go the wrong way. When I can pick up a 128GB or so SSD for $100 I'll be happy. $500 is way out of the question though.

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I love my SSD best performance increase ever...

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True 'dat bro.  My raid 0 pair made my system crazy (although part of that has to do with the 12GiB of ram).  Everything pretty much starts instantly.

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SSD ftw, i have one but thinking of gettin a second one for the computer im building

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I just hope to win the cyperpower pc :D it has a ssd included xD (my first ssd... if i win)

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Yeah Inspector me as well I don't have an SSD either at least not yet. The price against space thing has just been to much for me. I know it is an awesome upgrade, but just have not been able to justify it in my head as of yet. Not to mention being able to afford it!

It does seem to be the way things are going though. As I said also the more players in the market the faster the prices drop. This is especially so when it is big players like WD.

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rapid1:
If anyone wants one of these

No,...not for an inflated price we don't. The performance to price ratio is out of whack for these drives.

I guess it's the "Western Digital Pleasure Of Doing Business With Us Tax" that expects us to pay more for less performance.

Not this country boy, thank you!

Like others have said here, "when the prices come down, we will come".

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