Testing, Concluded
Sandra
Sounding more like somebody’s girlfriend than a benchmark, Sandra nonetheless provides us with a comprehensive suite of tests with which to thrash our test unit.
First off, the raw read test. What’s interesting to note here is that the RealSSD is almost dead even with Intel’s offering, which places it squarely in the upper tier.
Here, we have a look at a different aspect of the drive’s performance, the IOPS throughput. While the RealSSD comes out near the top at most points, the maximum throughput, 486IOPS, is a pathetic fraction of the 60K claimed on the box. Once again, the dreaded “up to” rears its ugly head.
In the file system test, the RealSSD posts numbers much like we’ve seen with the other benchmarks, handily thrashing the competing drives. It’s worth noting here that Sandra picks components to pit yours against seemingly at random; I could find no way to influence what drives it would be up against.
TeraCopy
Last, but certainly not least, we get to the “real world” test. TeraCopy is a program that may seem pointless at first—doesn’t Windows have its own copy handler, after all? It does, but as with many of Windows’ built in programs, it’s a bit crap. TeraCopy moves your files hither and yon faster than the copy handler in Windows, and provides extra features like md5 and sfv checksum verification. Handily enough, it also provides us with info about how long a transfer took and how fast it went, on average.
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In the first test, we copied several large files from one of the hard drives to the SSD, and then from one part of the SSD to another. In the HDD->SSD test, transfer capped at 39MB/sec, limited mainly by the HDD. In the SSD->SSD test, transfer averaged at 51MB/sec.
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In the second round of tests, we do the same operations with a folder full of small files, most under 1MB. For the HDD->SSD test, transfer averaged at 22MB/sec. For the SSD->SSD test, transfer averaged 76MB/sec.
[…] Quote: Slow secondary storage has been the biggest persistent gripe about PC gaming for quite a while now. While CPUs, RAM, graphics cards and system busses have all been improving at a steady rate; hard drives have stayed more or less stagnant for the past decade. Enter the solid state drive. At its most basic level, a SSD has the same basic structure as a USB flash drive: a bunch of NAND flash memory chips, a controller to tie them together, and an interface that talks to the outside world. Where a SSD pulls ahead is, naturally enough, in the performance of those three components. Today we’ll be looking at the RealSSD C300 256GB SSD from Crucial. Taking advantage of the still-uncommon SATA 6.0 GBps interface, this drive promises to deliver blisteringly fast performance. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/crucial-realssd-c300-256gb/ […]
[…] Quote: Slow secondary storage has been the biggest persistent gripe about PC gaming for quite a while now. While CPUs, RAM, graphics cards and system busses have all been improving at a steady rate; hard drives have stayed more or less stagnant for the past decade. Enter the solid state drive. At its most basic level, a SSD has the same basic structure as a USB flash drive: a bunch of NAND flash memory chips, a controller to tie them together, and an interface that talks to the outside world. Where a SSD pulls ahead is, naturally enough, in the performance of those three components. Today we’ll be looking at the RealSSD C300 256GB SSD from Crucial. Taking advantage of the still-uncommon SATA 6.0 GBps interface, this drive promises to deliver blisteringly fast performance. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/crucial-realssd-c300-256gb/ […]
[…] Quote: Slow secondary storage has been the biggest persistent gripe about PC gaming for quite a while now. While CPUs, RAM, graphics cards and system busses have all been improving at a steady rate; hard drives have stayed more or less stagnant for the past decade. Enter the solid state drive. At its most basic level, a SSD has the same basic structure as a USB flash drive: a bunch of NAND flash memory chips, a controller to tie them together, and an interface that talks to the outside world. Where a SSD pulls ahead is, naturally enough, in the performance of those three components. Today we’ll be looking at the RealSSD C300 256GB SSD from Crucial. Taking advantage of the still-uncommon SATA 6.0 GBps interface, this drive promises to deliver blisteringly fast performance. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/crucial-realssd-c300-256gb/ […]
[…] Quote: Slow secondary storage has been the biggest persistent gripe about PC gaming for quite a while now. While CPUs, RAM, graphics cards and system busses have all been improving at a steady rate; hard drives have stayed more or less stagnant for the past decade. Enter the solid state drive. At its most basic level, a SSD has the same basic structure as a USB flash drive: a bunch of NAND flash memory chips, a controller to tie them together, and an interface that talks to the outside world. Where a SSD pulls ahead is, naturally enough, in the performance of those three components. Today we’ll be looking at the RealSSD C300 256GB SSD from Crucial. Taking advantage of the still-uncommon SATA 6.0 GBps interface, this drive promises to deliver blisteringly fast performance. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/crucial-realssd-c300-256gb/ […]
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ChrisTWL, tcpflorida, Josh, Cory Blomenkamp, Tom Gowing and others. Tom Gowing said: Review: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB – http://www.techwarelabs.com/crucial-realssd-c300-256gb/ […]