Intel 320 Series SSD 160 GB Review

AS SSD

As you will have gathered from the previous page, we measured the performance of each drive using four different programs: CrystalDiskMark, DiskSpeed32, HD Tune and PCMark 7. 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.

In the sequential read and write tests, the performance of the Intel drive is reasonably close to the claimed figures. In the read test, it performed 4.5% better than the Kingston and 5.6% better than the Patriot.

In the 4K read test, the Intel 320 Series exhibited 81% better performance than the Kingston drive and 48% better than the Patriot drive. But in the 4K write test, the Intel unit performed the same as the Kingston drive and was beaten by the Patriot Torqx 2 which achieved 8.5% better performance.

The Intel drive performed 75% better than the Kingston and 80% better than the Patriot in the read access time test; but in the write access time test, the Patriot drive outperformed the Intel by 21%. The Intel drive still beat the Kingston drive by 8%, though.