OCZ ARC 100 (240GB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 26, 2014 7:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based – we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we are testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we have been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
The good IO consistency translates into good performance in our 2013 Storage Bench. The ARC 100 is without a doubt the fastest value drive in the market for heavy IO workloads as the 840 EVO and MX100 do not even come close.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
The prices were accurate yesterday as the title of the table shows. Obviously everyone should use their own judgement when making a buying decision since prices fluctuate all the time.Prodromaki - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
Ok mate. It seemed a little bit weird to me, because I read all the reviews/ssd recommendations here and the EVO 256 has been consistently priced @140$ in your tables for the past few months, so I went ahead and checked, hence the comment. It must have been an odd newegg one-day-fluctuation-thing yesterday then.KAlmquist - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
$165 is the current Newegg price for the desktop bundle. The extra $25 gets you an adaptor that lets you plug the SSD into a USB port, the Magician software that Kristian praises below, and some other miscellany.Prodromaki - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
Btw if I offered to sell you the EVO 256 and the MX100 256 at 140$/130$ respectively, which one would you have chosen?P.S. Thanks for the swift reply.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
I would go with the EVO because of Samsung's SSD Magician. Nothing in Magician is really necessary but some of the features can be handy and it is easier to use than many third party tools.As for the NewEgg pricing, there seems to be something wrong with the 250GB link because it is constantly changing (leads to NewEgg front page now). I saw this happening yesterday already, so not sure if there is a way to fix it.
Prodromaki - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
Ok, thanks for your time Kris, much appreciated.mapesdhs - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
The one thing I don't like about Magician is the fact that it can't do a secure erase
much of the time (always says the SSD is locked) - one must do a separate boot
and erase using a dedicated boot device, CD, USB, etc. By contrast, I've never
seen this happen with OCZ's Toolbox, it's always able to s/e an SSD.
Other than the above though, I happily use both brands of SSD (I have many
of each).
Ian.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
(re Toolbox, I did of course mean an OCZ SSD, not any SSD in general)dj christian - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
doesn't Magician do triming in the background and garbage collection?barleyguy - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
I trust my data a lot more to Samsung SSDs than OCZ ones. From that perspective it's worth the extra $10. Intel is maybe worth another $20, at least.I can earn another $10 or $30 in less time that it will take me to deal with a crash. And even if that never happens, peace of mind is worth something...