SATA III SSD Round-Up: OCZ, Corsair, Patriot, Crucial
PCMark 7 Storage Benchmarks
We really like PCMark 7's Secondary Storage benchmark module for its pseudo real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark 7 offers a trace-based measurement of system response times under various scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system operation. From simple application start-up performance, to data streaming from a drive in a game engine, and video editing with Windows Movie Maker, we feel more comfortable that these tests reasonably illustrate the performance profile of SSDs in an end-user / consumer PC usage model, moreso than a purely synthetic transfer test.
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PCMark 7's Secondary Storage Benchmark had the OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS edition drive taking the top spot, followed closely by the Patriot Wildfire, and then Corsair's Force GT. As we tunnel down into the individual results, though, it becomes clear that only one of the modules seven tests showed relatively large deltas separating the drives.
All of the drives performed within a megabyte or two per second of each other (give or take a fraction) in six of the seven tests, here. In the "Starting Applications" tests, however, the three fastest drives also ended up being the top three performers overall, at least according to PCMark 7.
