Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD Review

Name: Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD Review - Page 12
Brand: Fusion-io

by Dave Altavilla — Monday, November 16, 2009, 09:00 AM EDT

Our final test case couldn't get any more straightforward. Here we'll show you how the ioXtreme performs under a real-world application loading condition like a game level load-up. Here we simply installed Left 4 Dead on each of the drives we've tested and then proceeded to launch single player games on either the No Mercy or Dead Air levels. Also, as you'll note, we've included the Fusion-io card in this test, for a relative measure of performance.

Game Level Load Test

Left 4 Dead Game Level Load Times Measured

If you recall from our PCMark Vantage testing, this is an area that the ioXtreme drives excel - application loading. The ioXtreme Pro RAID combination didn't offer much in the way of a performance boost but the single drive performance was more than twice as fast as the Z-Drive and the Intel SSD in one test. We tossed in Fusion-io's ioDrive for good measure here as well and it too offered similar performance. Application level loading like this is comprised of lot of fast smaller file transfers and this is where the ioXtreme and ioDrives really shine versus a standard SSD.