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) |
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.
