GSKill Phoenix Pro: Little Drive, Lotta Performance

Our Test Methodologies:  Under 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, Vantage, and CrystalDiskMark benchmark tests. And all drives were secure erased prior to the start of any testing. 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 i5 Powered

HD Tune 4.5 http://www.hdtune.com

Given the age and limitations of HDTach, we've elected to adopt HDTune in its stead. HDTune is capable of performing a wide variety of performance tests—far more than HDTach—and can also be used to measure file system performance.

HD Tune is a synthetic benchmark that only tests one particular type of read / write performance, so it's not a test we put tremendous weight on. Results here are a bit mixed; the Phoenix Pro outpaces our other SandForce drive's read performance, but is passed by both the Crucial C300 and Intel's X25-M. When it comes to write performance, the Phoenix takes first place by a hair.

One thing to watch in the other benchmarks is the disparity between the read/write speeds of Intel's X25-M and, to a lesser extent, Crucial's C300. Neither drive is the focus of this review, but the Phoenix Pro's performance highlights just how much write rates have increased in a short time.