7-Way SSD Round-Up: Sandforce vs. JMicron

Name: 7-Way SSD Round-Up: Sandforce vs. JMicron - Page 8
Brand: 7-Way

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, June 25, 2010, 10:00 AM EDT

CrystalDiskMark is another synthetic test we've started looking at that evaluates both sequential as well as random small and large file transfers. It does a nice job of providing a quick look at best and worst case scenarios with SSD performance, best case being large sequential transfers and worse case being small, random 4K transfers.

CrystalDiskMark Benchmarks

Synthetic File Transfer Tests

OCZ Agility 2 100GB	OCZ Vertex 2 100GB
Corsair Force 100GB	OWC Mercury Extreme RE 100GB
Patriot Zephyr 128GB

Corsair Force 120GB

OCZ Vertex 2 120GB

CrystalDiskMark does a good job of showcasing the performance difference between the differen firmware revisions used with the SandForce based drives and actually shows the JMicron based Zephyr with the strongest sequential reads and writes. Notice the OCZ Agility and OWC drives have much lower performance with 4K writes when the queue depth is increases, versus the Vertex 2 and Corsair drives. This performance difference is a direct result of the performance limiter incorporated into certain firmware revisions for SandForce 1200-based drives.

Like we saw in the ATTO benchmark, the newer 120GB drives from Corsair and OCZ perform just like the 100GB drives here.

Tags: SSD, OCZ, Corsair, Storage, SATA, OWC, Patriot, solid state

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com