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Review: PNY Prevail Elite (240GB)

by Tarinder Sandhu on 15 March 2013, 16:00 3.5

Tags: PNY

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabtvr

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Test setup

Test Bench

CPU Intel Core i7-3770K (up to 3.9GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Memory 8GB G.Skill TridentX (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 2,400MHz
Storage Controllers Intel Z77 PCH (SATA 6Gbps, AHCI)
Graphics Card Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC 2GB
Power Supply Corsair AX750
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium (SP1, 64-bit)

Comparison Drive Configurations

  Total Capacity Controller Firmware Interface
Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB SandForce SF-2281 332ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
SanDisk Extreme 120GB SandForce SF-2281 R112 SATA 6Gbps
Crucial m4 128GB Marvell 88SS9174 0309 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Octane 128GB Indilinx IDX300M00-BC E0882584 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Force Series GS 240GB SandForce SF-2281 5.02 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Neutron Series 240GB Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 M206 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Neutron Series GTX 240GB Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 M206 SATA 6Gbps
Intel 520 Series 240GB SandForce SF-2281 400i SATA 6Gbps
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SandForce SF-2281 501ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
PNY Prevail Elite 240GB SandForce SF-2281 5.05 SATA 6Gbps
SanDisk Extreme 240GB SandForce SF-2281 R201 SATA 6Gbps
Samsung 840 Series 250GB Samsung MDX DXM06B0Q SATA 6Gbps
ADATA XPG SX910 256GB SandForce SF-2281 5.0.1 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB Marvell 88SS9174 1.0 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vector 256GB Indilinx Barefoot 3 10200000 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB Indilinx IDX400M00-BC 05.10.31 SATA 6Gbps
Plextor M5 Pro 256GB Marvell 88SS9187 1.02 SATA 6Gbps
Samsung 830 Series 256GB Samsung MCX CXM03B1Q SATA 6Gbps
Samsung 840 PRO Series 256GB Samsung MDX DXM03B0Q SATA 6Gbps
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB Marvell SS889175 X211200 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Neutron Series GTX 480GB Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 M206 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 3 480GB SandForce SF-2281 2.15 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB Indilinx IDX400M00-BC 05.10.31 SATA 6Gbps
Samsung 840 PRO Series 512GB Samsung MDX DXM02B0Q SATA 6Gbps
Samsung HD103SJ HDD 1TB N/A 1AJ100E4 SATA 3Gbps

Benchmarks

ATTO Disk Benchmark The freeware ATTO benchmark provides basic sequential speed results for both read and write operations. Using the default queue depth of four, we record read and write speeds during 1MB transfers.
CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark provides various storage benchmarks, but we're interested in the returned 32-thread 4K performance numbers to see how well the drives fare when tasked with numerous small transfers.
AS SSD Another freeware benchmark, AS SSD is designed primarily for testing solid-state storage. We run the benchmark and record the drive's overall read and write scores. The final numbers take into account sequential speeds, input/output performance and access time.
Iometer Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement tool originally developed by Intel. To measure a drive's I/O performance, we set the benchmark to utilise 4KB transfers in a random spread. Read and write distribution is set to 50 per cent, and queue depth at 32. The test is run for two minutes and we record the total I/Os per second.
PCMark 7 PCMark 7's storage test is a collection of workloads that isolate the performance of the PC's storage system.

Dirty-drive testing

We also tested the drive in what's called a dirty state, where data has been written and erased. We used Iometer to fill 97 per cent of the Prevail Elite's capacity with random 4K writes. Straight thereafter the AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark tests were re-run, before the SSD's TRIM functionality had a chance to kick in.

The Prevail Elite returned benchmark scores that were practically identical to that posted from a fresh run, which is good to see.