Overall System Performance using PCMark Vantage

Next up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite. Any performance impacts here would most likely be reflected in the real world.

PCMark Vantage

The overall PCMark Vantage score takes into account CPU and GPU performance and thus storage performance is only one aspect of determining your score. All of the SSDs do well here, the slowest configuration still around 36% faster than the WD VelociRaptor; something I'd say is more than reflected in real world performance.

The memories suite includes a test involving importing pictures into Windows Photo Gallery and editing them, a fairly benign task that easily falls into the category of being very influenced by disk performance.

PCMark Vantage - Memories Suite

Once again the SSDs all perform very similarly here. The fastest of the group is Intel's X25-E, but the Indilinx drives actually hold the next three spots followed by the new G2. The performance range is very small between these drives though, you honestly can't go wrong with either an Indilinx MLC or X25-M.

The TV and Movies tests focus on on video transcoding which is mostly CPU bound, but one of the tests involves Windows Media Center which tends to be disk bound.

PCMark Vantage - TV & Movies Suite

The standings continue to be roughly the same. We see just how much more competitive Indilinx is this time around than when the OCZ Vertex first hit the streets. We do have a real alternative to Intel.

The gaming tests are very well suited to SSDs since they spend a good portion of their time focusing on reading textures and loading level data. All of the SSDs dominate here, but as you'll see later on in my gaming tests the benefits of an SSD really vary depending on the game. Take these results as a best case scenario of what can happen, not the norm.

PCMark Vantage - Gaming Suite

The Vantage Gaming Suite shows us our first example of the X25-M G2 pulling ahead of even the SLC X25-E. Even the Samsung based OCZ Summit does very well here.

In the Music suite the main test is a multitasking scenario: the test simulates surfing the web in IE7, transcoding an audio file and adding music to Windows Media Player (the most disk intensive portion of the test).

PCMark Vantage - Music Suite

The Intel drives are at the top, the G1 faster than the G2, followed by the Indilinx drives, then the Samsung drive and the mechanical drives. New performance is important here because once TRIM shows up, this is closer to what you'll be seeing for a drive with a good amount of free space.

The Communications suite is made up of two tests, both involving light multitasking. The first test simulates data encryption/decryption while running message rules in Windows Mail. The second test simulates web surfing (including opening/closing tabs) in IE7, data decryption and running Windows Defender.

PCMark Vantage - Communications Suite

I love PCMark's Productivity test; in this test there are four tasks going on at once, searching through Windows contacts, searching through Windows Mail, browsing multiple webpages in IE7 and loading applications. This is as real world of a scenario as you get and it happens to be representative of one of the most frustrating HDD usage models - trying to do multiple things at once. There's nothing more annoying than trying to launch a simple application while you're doing other things in the background and have the load take seemingly forever.

PCMark Vantage - Productivity Suite

Here the Intel drives are at the top, by a noticeable margin. The G1, G2 and X25-E are all around the same level of performance. Samsung comes close with the OCZ Summit and the Indilinx drives pull up the rear. You can't go wrong with either the Intel or Indilinx drives but Intel is clearly faster here.

The final PCMark Vantage suite is HDD specific and this is where you'll see the biggest differences between the drives:

PCMark Vantage - HDD Suite

When it comes to pure drive performance, the breakdown doesn't get any simpler. Intel's X25-E holds the top spot, followed by the G2 and G1. While the G2 is only 5.6% faster than the G1, remember that we're looking at "new" performance here. Over time, with TRIM, the G2 will be closer to this performance, while the G1 will never get here again.

Despite poor random small file write performance, the OCZ Summit actually does very well here.

All of the drives perform incredibly compared to any mechanical hard drives.

Random Read/Write Speed PCMark Vantage: Used Drive Performance
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  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    I believe OCZ cut prices to distributors that day, but the retail prices will take time to fall. Once you see X25-M G2s in stock then I'd expect to see the Indilinx drives fall in price. Resellers won't give you a break unless they have to :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • bobjones32 - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    Another great AnandTech article, thanks for the read.

    Just a head's-up on the 80GB X-25m Gen2 - A day before Newegg finally had them on sale, they bumped their price listing from $230 to $250. They sold at $250 for about 2 hours last Friday, went back out of stock until next week, and bumped the price again from $250 to $280.

    So....plain supply vs. demand is driving the price of the G2 roughly $50 higher than it was listed at a week ago. I have a feeling that if you wait a week or two, or shop around a bit, you'll easily find them selling elsewhere for the $230 price they were originally going for.
  • AbRASiON - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    Correct, Newegg has gouged the 80gb from 229 to 279 and the 160gb from 449 to 499 :(

  • Stan Zaske - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    Absolutely first rate article Anand and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Get some rest dude! LOL
  • Jaramin - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    I'm wondering, if I were to use a low capacity SSD to install my OS on, but install my programs to a HDD for space reasons, just how much would that spoil the SSD advantage? All OS reads an writes would still be on the SSD, and the paging file would also be there. I'm very curious about the amount of degradation one would see relative to different use routines and apps.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    Putting all of your apps (especially frequently used ones) off of your SSD would defeat the purpose of an SSD. You'd be missing out on the ultra-fast app launch times.

    Pick a good SSD and you won't have to worry too much about performance degradation. As long as you don't stick it into a database server :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • swedishchef - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link

    What if you just put your photoshop cache on a pair of Velociraptors? Would it be the same loss of benefit?

    I have the same question regarding uncompressed HD video work, where I need write speeds well over the Intel x25-m ( over 240Mb/s). My assumption would be that I could enjoy the fast IO and App. launch of an SSD and increase CPU performance with the SSD while keeping the files on a fast external or internal raid configuration.


    Thank you again for a a brilliant Article Anand.
    I have been waiting for it for a long time. Yours are the only calm words out on the net.

    Grateful Geek /Also professional image creator.
  • creathir - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    Great article Anand. I've been waiting for it...

    My only thoughts are, why can't Intel get their act together with the sequential business? Why can the others handle it, but they can't? To have such an awesome piece of hardware have such a nasty blemish is strange to me, especially on a Gen-2 product.

    I suppose there is some technical reason as to why, but it needs to be addressed.

    - Creathir
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    If Intel would only let me do a deep dive on their controller I'd be able to tell you :) There's more I'd like to say but I can't yet unfortunately.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • shotage - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link

    Awesome article!

    I'm intrigued with the cap on the sequential reads that Intel has on the G2 drives as well. I always thought it was strange to see even on their first gen stuff.

    I'm assuming that this cap might be in place to somehow ensure the excellent performance they are giving with random read/writes. All until TRIM finally shows up and you'll have to write up another full on review (which I eagerly await!).

    I can't wait to see what 2010 brings to the table. What with the next version of SATA and TRIM just over the horizon, I could finally get the kind of performance out of my PC that I want!!

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