System setup and lots of notes
Specifications| Storage drive | OCZ Vertex | OCZ Vertex | Corsair P256 | Intel X25-M | Samsung Spinpoint F1-DT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drive capacity | 120GB | 30GB | 256GB (240GB binary) | 80GB (74GB binary) | 750GB (695GB binary) |
| Drive firmware | 1.30 | 1.10 | VBM1801Q | 045C8820 |
N/A |
| Approx. price at time of writing | £297.99 |
£94.65 |
£515.81 | £241.27 | £55.56 |
| Approx price per GB | £2.48 |
£3.16* |
£2.15* |
£3.26* | £0.08* |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.20GHz) | ||||
| Motherboard | eVGA nForce 790i SLI FTW | ||||
| BIOS revision | I790SZ13
(10/22/2008) |
||||
| Memory | 4GB Corsair XMS3 DHX PC10,600 @ 1,333MHz | ||||
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra | ||||
| Mainboard software | nForce
15.25 |
||||
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 182.50 | ||||
| PSU | Enermax MODU 82+ 625W | ||||
| Operating System | Windows Vista Business SP1, 64-bit | ||||
Tests
| 2D benchmarks | Iometer 2006.07.27 h2benchw 3.13 PCMark Vantage 1.0 w/Nov '07 hotfix Microsoft Vista boot time Far Cry 2 loading time |
|---|
Setup notes - important
* - the Corsair, Intel, and Samsung drives have been price-normalised for binary capacities.SSDs should be straightforward to test, providing easily-reproducible numbers run after run, right? The vagaries of how the operating system and SSD controller interact with one another makes it more difficult than should be, as we've detailed extensively in a previous review.
The Vertex 120GB shipped with the v1.30 (PDF) firmware, one that features a TRIM tool for keeping performance ticking along without degradation caused by a 'filled-page issue'.
In order to deliver clean, solid numbers, representing a best-case scenario, we secured-erased each drive before testing. Doing so removed the potential performance bottlenecks associated with having too many empty pages filled on the drive(s).
Iometer, in particular, can write well over 3GB of data to the drives, and the benchmark was run last. Each drive was secure-erased between benchmark runs to ensure optimal performance. We'll be looked at 'used' drive performance in a separate article, detailing how the various drives' speeds vary with the amount written to them.
Our benchmark numbers focus on how quickly the drives can spit out and write data of different sizes, and the access penalty for doing so. SSDs should be ultra-fast when reading/writing small-sized files, particularly 4KB, and Iometer tests this.
On a more pragmatic note, we've also included benchmark numbers from PCMark Vantage's HDD suite, encompassing a total of five tests. Further, with the image build on all drives, we've hand-timed Vista-loading performance and evaluated which ones are the quickest for loading games.
Lastly, we've chosen to compare the OCZ Vertex 120GB's performance up against a 30GB model with the v1.10 firmware, to see how capacity and firmware makes a difference, if at all. Further, we've included the benchmark-topping Intel X25-M 80GB released late last year and firmware-updated to the latest available version, together with Corsair's impressive P256. A mechanical 750GB Samsung drive provides reference numbers.
