Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD

Written by Miles Cheatham

Sunday, 18 January 2009

Table of Contents: Page Index
Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD
Intel X25-M Features
Intel SSDSA2MH080G15E Specifications
Intel X25-M First Look
SSD Testing Methodology
System Speed Test Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmarks
EVEREST Disk Benchmark
Intel X25-M Final Thoughts
SSDSA2MH080G15E Conclusion

Page 6 of 10

System Speed Test Benchmarks

It's show time! All claims to performance are either made real or proven false in our testing, and although SSD's clearly offer some advantages it sometimes takes seeing a product compared to the performance of others to prove the point. Not very long ago I decided to take action and get System Speed Test v4.78 back in our test rotation. This software is solid, and the results are more accurate than any others available that I have used.

I doubt that when DOS was put to rest, Vladimir Afanasiev ever thought he would see his System Speed Test software used again in professional reviews. This program offers comprehensive system information, but it also has a powerful benchmarking tool for memory, processor, and disks. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface and physical transfer rates, seek and access times at the hardware level, and it does so without delay or interference from Operating System software or running processes. This is why Benchmark Reviews will continue to use this test: it polls its results directly from the hardware without the need for Windows!

To detect the Random Access Time of each device, we ran full test routines on all products a total of five times. The highest and lowest scores were ignored, and the remainder was averaged. This would be pointless however, because in every single access time benchmark the test results were identical. In the bandwidth tests the results were extremely close to the others, and therefore required averaging.

With the Intel X25-M boasting a read speed in the 250 MB/sec range our initial feelings at Benchmark Reviews was that something would have to give along the way in testing. We initially felt that "something" would most likely be access times. To our sheer and utter delight we were very wrong as the X25-M we were very wrong about that prognostication as this SSD proved to be among the fastest drives we had tested for access time. It joined the the elite, sub one tenth of a millisecond club with the Mtron Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525being he only faster drive that we have tested to date. It's also worth keeping in mind that our Hard Disk Drive alternatives are a much slower to react: Western Digital's Raptor took 8.53ms to respond, followed by 12.99ms for the Seagate 7200.11, and 15.39ms for the 7200 RPM (most are 4800 RPM) Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 notebook drive.