Business Disk WinBench 99

Thanks to its extremely high read speed, the 80 GB OCZ RevoDrive was the fastest solid state drive in this test, followed at a distance by the 120 GB OCZ Vertex 2 (E), the 240 GB Intel 520 Series, the 60 GB OCZ Agility 2 (E) and the Corsair F90. The 30 GB Kingston SSDNow V (Gen 2) was the slowest SSD in this comparison, being less than 1/4th as fast as the OCZ RevoDrive.

High-End Disk WinBench 99

Note : The top 3 SSDs successfully completed the test but WinMark refused to return a result. It is quite likely that their results were much higher than what WinMark was able to report.

In the High-End test, the 240 GB HyperX Savage edged out the 120 GB OCZ Vertex 2 (E) and the Western Digital Black² by a small margin. While most SSDs scored around or above 200 MB/s in this test, the 120 GB Intel X25-M G2, the 64 GB OCZ Enyo and the 30 GB Kingston SSDNow V were noticeably slower - with a throughput of around 120 MB/s.

This shows the minimum and maximum transfer rate from the NAND flash memory to the controller. Because the transfer rate of NAND flash memory cells are not affected by their locality, all SSDs will have a tight transfer rate range that will vary only within a few MB/s. It doesn't matter whether you are reading from the first byte or the last byte - the transfer rate will be the same.

The 80 GB OCZ RevoDrive was the throughput leader of this pack, thanks to its use of RAID stripping. It was followed at a distance by the 256 GB OCZ Vector, the 240 GB HyperX Savage, the 120 GB Western Digital Black² and the 240 GB Intel 520 Series. The USB 3.0-based 64 GB OCZ Enyo was last with an average transfer rate of just under 200 MB/s, 63% below that of the OCZ RevoDrive.

We monitored the surface temperature of the solid state drives during their benchmark runs. The following chart shows their operating temperature range, from idle to maximum load. Please note that instead of giving you the absolute numbers, we are showing the temperature delta, which is the difference between the actual temperature and the ambient room temperature.

* To be fair, the OCZ RevoDrive does not come with a case like the other SSDs. Thus, the reading was taken directly off the hottest spot on the PCB. In addition, the Western Digital Black² has a hard disk drive attached to it, which would give it a higher reading than it would as a solitary SSD.

With the exception of the 90 GB Corsair F90, there appears to be a direct correlation between the storage capacity of the solid state drive and its average thermal output. The 30 GB Kingston SSDNow V (Gen 2) was the coolest SSD (after the Corsair F90), followed by the 64 GB Kingston SSDNow V+ (Gen 2) and the 60 GB OCZ Agility 2 (E).

Support Tech ARP!

If you like our work, you can help support out work by visiting our sponsors, participate in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donate to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!