Four-Way SSD Round-Up, OCZ, Super Talent, Mtron
PCMark Vantage HDD Test Continued
Our next series of Vantage tests will stress the current Achilles Heel of all SSDs, that being write performance. Applications like video editing, streaming and recording are not what we would call a strong suit for the average SSD, due ot their high mix of random write transactions. We should also note that it's not so much a weakness of the memory itself, but rather the interface and control algorithms that deal with inherent erase block latency of NAND flash. SSD manufacturers are getting better at this but still today, especially with consumer grade SSDs, spinning drives still have the edge with respect to write intensive applications.
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If we were to hand out an all-out real-world performance award, it would have to be to OCZ's 64GB standard SLC drive. It consistently showed top-of-the-line performance and very few soft spots, even within the Vantage Windows Media Center and Movie Maker tests, which are comprised of nearly 50% write operations. Beyond that, the OCZ Core Series and Super Talent MasterDrive MX SSDs continue to mirror each other's performance. The MLC drives and Mtron's SLC drive can't keep up with the VelociRaptor in the Media Center tests but fare a little better in the Movie Maker test, where video read and skip operations afforded them a bit more performance headroom. Finally, again, if you look at more read intensive tests, like application loading with Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop or MS Outlook, as well as the Windows Media Player tests, the SSDs overtake the speedy WD VelociRaptor, in some cases by an order of magnitude.
