Testing The OCZ Enyo

The Testbed

Testing Methodology

We tested in both Windows 7 and Windows Vista, with the latest updates. We chose to use IO Meter as well as our "old faithful", WinBench 99 2.0, with the following tests :

• Platter Data Transfer Profile
• Business Disk WinMark 99
• High-End Disk WinMark 99
• Disk Transfer Rate (Beginning)
• Disk Transfer Rate (End)

Business Disk WinMark 99 is a real-world simulation based on three office application suites - Microsoft Office 97, Lotus SmartSuite and Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, as well as a web browser, Netscape Navigator. They are quite dated, but should still reflect the usage patterns of users in an office environment using such applications. The test runs through a script that keeps multiple applications open, while it performs tasks that switches between those applications and Netscape Navigator. The result is the average transfer rate during the script run.

High-End Disk WinMark 99 is a real-world simulation based on AVS/Express 3.4, FrontPage 98, MicroStation SE, Photoshop 4.0, Premiere 4.2, Sound Forge 4.0 and Visual C++ 5.0. However, it differs by running the applications serially, instead of simultaneously. There are individual results for each application but in this comparison, we will be looking only at the weighted average score, which is the average transfer rate during the tests.

Unfortunately, WinBench 99 seemed to have some issues with Windows Vista, or the current Vista driver for the SATA controller. It would register a SetFilePointer error in the Disk Access Time test. So, we were not able to obtain any Disk Access Time results.

We also ran our own suite of test files. Here are the details of the two sets of test files we used :

• Large Files : 29 high-resolution photos (250,030,840 bytes)
• Small Files : 436 low-resolution photos (250,001,809 bytes)

All transfer rate tests were timed using a Seiko WC73-4000 stopwatch with a rated accuracy of 10 ms. A minimum of 3 test runs were performed, with additional test runs undertaken if the results were off by more than half a second. The closest group of 3 run times was averaged to obtain the final result.

The case temperature results were obtained using a Fluke 62 Mini infra-red thermometer. The Load temperature test was carried out after at least 5 minutes running IO Meter (512 KB sequential read), with IO Meter continuing to run. The drives were allowed to idle for a minimum of 15 minutes before the Idle temperature test was performed. A minimum of 5 test spots were examined on each case, with the maximum test result used.

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