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.
There’s not much to see here; all the drives had closely-grouped scores, although the 128GB Vertex 4 was the slowest by a nose and all four of the highest scores were posted by SandForce-driven SSDs.
The scores here are borne out in the individual PCMark 7 scores. None of the drives do much to separate themselves from one another but performance is robust all around.
