Test Setup

Standard Test Bed
Performance Test Configuration
Processor Phenom 9850BE
RAM GSkill PC2-8500 (2x2GB) - 4GB
OS Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB SATA 3Gb/s
System Platform Drivers ATI - 8.4
Video Cards MSI HD 3870x2
Video Drivers ATI - 8.4
CPU Cooling Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-520HX
Optical Drive LG GGCH20L - Blu-ray / HD-DVD Combo
Case Cooler Master CM Stacker 830
Motherboards MSI K9A2 Platinum
Operating System Windows Vista-64 Ultimate SP1
.

DVNation provided the latest Memoright MR25.2-032S GT drive for comparison in our HD Tune tests. This drive features 120/120 MB/s read/write specifications and with a total of eight of these drives on-hand, we will have a special RAID performance article shortly. We will also update this article with results from this drive in the near future; in the meantime, we are using the Mtron 32GB SSD for application benchmark comparisons as it features specifications near the Samsung/OCZ offerings.

Our testbed uses an MSI HD 3870 video card to ensure that our graphics benchmarks are not GPU bound. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 at High Quality settings. All of our tests run in an enclosed case with a dual optical/hard drive setup to reflect a moderately loaded system platform. We fully patch the OS and load a clean drive image for each platform in order to make sure that driver conflicts are minimal.

We format before each test run and complete five tests on each drive in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark results. We remove the high and low scores and report the remaining score. The Vista swap file is set to a static 2048MB and we clear the prefetch folder after each benchmark.

Software Test Suite

With the variety of disk drive benchmarks available, we need a means of comparing the true performance of the hard drives in real world applications. Our abbreviated benchmark suite for today's article will include:

  • HD Tune
  • Thermals
  • WinRAR
  • Nero Recode
  • Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
  • Crysis
  • PCMark Vantage

Our benchmark suite is suited for desktop applications. Our next installment will feature a notebook-oriented suite.

When Smaller is Better Run Silent, Run Cool
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  • Dobs - Saturday, May 17, 2008 - link

    I like the sound of that.. a Hybrid with built in Raid (or equiv).

    So.... I'll have the Samsung F1 SSD3 500GB Hybrid thanks!
    That's the one that includes 1 308GB platter and 3 64GB SSD's (in Raid0 equiv)
  • mechBgon - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    "We waivered about presenting either drive an award."

    I think you meant "wavered."
  • Baked - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    I know you guys get all the freebies you want, do a RAID-5 w/ these drives now!
  • Juddog - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    The main advantage here IMHO is the power required, heat dissipation, noise level and MTBF. Perfect for notebooks. Working as a tech I see notebook drive failures all the time. I see plenty of executive level people with notebooks that would gladly pay a few hundred extra to get a much greater extended battery time from lower power usage, and greater data protection from the MTBF, not to mention the shock levels that these drives typically have is much greater than that of a hard drive.

    This is excellent for people who travel around a lot and carry expensive data on their laptops. Top it off with data encryption technologies that more companies are moving into, and the access time plays an even greater roll.
  • strikeback03 - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    IIRC, the tests in the Macbook Air at least showed little to no advantage in battery life from the SSD. The durability though would be nice. I personally wouldn't consider one until we can get drives upwards of 100GB for under $500.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 17, 2008 - link

    MacBook Air SSD testing was actually http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3226&a...">quite good. I think you're probably remembering the more recent http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=328...">128GB SSD follow-up where the extra performance and size of the SSD made power requirements about equal to a standard HDD.
  • Ender17 - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    Any results on the snapiness with these drives as seen here?
    http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=328...">http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=328...
  • tshen83 - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    Too bad it is out of stock. I hope STT makes more of it. 299 for 30GB of 120MB/read speed.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    But only 40MB/s writes.
  • semisonic9 - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    ...over it's competition? What's up with that? Would have expected 7200.11 drives, or 1tb drives, to be faster.

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