240 GB SATA-600 Solid State Drive Round-Up

AS SSD

As you will have gathered from the previous page, we measured the performance of each drive using three different programs: AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark, and HD Tune. We will be looking at the test results from each program in the order they appear in the list above.

It’s important to note that we connected the SSDs to a SATA-600 port on our motherboard rather than a SATA-300 port, which could cause performance limitations. We used the default configuration in AS SSD for our tests.

All three SandForce based drives – the OWC Mercury 6G, OCZ Vertex 3 (MI), and Mushkin Chronos – exhibited a similar level of performance in the sequential read test. They were approximately 9% better than the Intel 510 Series drive and 21% better than the Crucial M4 unit.

In the sequential write test, the Intel 510 Series drive exhibited the best performance, which was about 12% better than the OWC Mercury 6G. The other two SandForce based drives, the Mushkin Chronos and OCZ Vertex 3 (MI), exhibited a similar level of performance, which was about 18% slower than the Intel unit. The Crucial M4 drive showed the worst performance in this test and was around 30% slower than the Intel 510 Series unit.

In the random read test using 4 KB, the OWC Mercury 6G performed best, beating the Crucial M4 and OCZ Vertex 3 (MI) by just over 3 percent. These drives exhibited a similar level of performance to each other. The Intel 510 Series and Mushkin Chronos also showed a similar level of performance to each other, which was around 15% less than the OWC Mercury 6G.

Moving on to the random write test using 4 KB blocks, the Mushkin Chronos and OWC Mercury 6G exhibited a similar level of performance, which was around 4% better than the OCZ Vertex 3 (MI) and 5% better than the Crucial M4. The Intel 510 Series unit was the clear loser in this test, as it scored 38% worse than the best performers in this test.

The Mushkin Chronos and OWC Mercury 6G exhibited a similar level of performance in the read test, beating the Crucial M4 by 16%, the OCZ Vertex 3 (MI) by 160%, and the Intel 510 Series by 204 percent. In the write test, the Intel 510 Series drive was
the best, beating the OWC Mercury 6G by 141%, the OCZ Vertex 3 (MI) by 153%, the Mushkin Chronos by 156%, and the Crucial M4 by 184 percent.