64 GB Solid State Drive Round-Up

CrystalDiskMark

As you could see in the previous page, we measured performance using three different programs, CrystalDiskMark, DiskSpeed32 and HD Tune.  On this page we will analyze the results provided by CrystalDiskMark, while in the next pages we will discuss the results brought by the other two programs.

It is important to note that we connected the SSDs to the motherboard SATA-600 port, to make sure performance wouldn’t be limited by the use of a SATA-300 port.

We left this program with its default configuration, meaning it benchmarked each SSD using five simultaneous threads using a file size of 100 MB. Let’s see the results.

On sequential read Intel X25-M is the best SSD around, with Kingston V+ Series practically with the same performance level. The unit from Intel was, on average, 14% faster than the other three units, which achieved a similar performance between themselves. Kingston V+ Series achieved a performance 11% higher than the other three units, on average.

As for sequential write, the situation got inverted. Intel X25-M was the worse unit on this test, with Kingston V+ Series being the fastest: 27% faster than Mushkin Io, 34% faster than Patriot Torqx, 35% faster than OCZ Vertex and 156% faster than Intel X25-M.  As you can see on the graph, Patriot Torqx and OCZ Vertex achieved the same performance level on this test.

On random read using 512 KB blocks Kingston V+ Series was the champ, beating Intel X25-M, which is remarkable. It was 29% faster than Intel X25-M, 36% faster than OCZ Vertex and Patriot Torqx and 41% faster than Mushkin Io. Here again the units from Patriot and OCZ got the same performance.

On random write using 512 KB blocks Kingston V+ Series was the best SSD, with a performance 45% higher than Mushkin Io, 53% higher than OCZ Vertex, 54% higher than Patriot Torqx and 133% higher than Intel X25-M.

On random read using very small blocks (4 KB), OCZ Vertex was the winner, being 30% faster than Patriot Torqx, 32% faster than Mushkin Io, 48% faster than Intel X25-M and 59% faster than Kingston V+ Series.

On random write using very small blocks (4 KB) Intel X25-M was the fastest unit, being 58% faster than Kingston V+ Series, 322% faster than Mushkin Io, 367% faster than OCZ Vertex and 370% faster than Patriot Torqx.