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, more so than a purely synthetic transfer test.
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Since this is a real-world test, the results depend on more than sheer bandwidth or anything else. We certainly cannot say the 5100 Series drives put up a poor score here, but it is not chart topping. Again, these drives are not intended to meet consumer demands. They are built for reliability and to meet the diverse demands of the datacenter. Thus, while the performance and capacities are nice, there are likely more suitable options for a home PC.
We have also begun testing with PCMark 8. PCMark 8 uses updated real-world scenarios to improve upon PCMark 7’s offerings and provide a more realistic spread of modern storage demands. PCMark 8 incorporates a couple popular gaming titles, World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3, along with pieces of the Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Office suites which reflect everyday use cases.
While we do not have any results to compare with yet, we do see that both 5100 Series siblings are very equally matched for performance in regular usage. Keep in mind, of course, that the 5100 MAX is rated for significantly higher write endurance than the 5100 ECO.
