| OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Monday, 01 August 2011 | |
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Page 7 of 11
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 TestsCrystalDiskMark 3.0 is a file transfer and operational bandwidth benchmark tool from Crystal Dew World that offers performance transfer speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our test results chart below, the 4KB 32-Queue Depth read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB space. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested, and all drives are formatted with NTFS on the Intel P67 chipset configured to use AHCI-mode. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to illustrate operational IOPS performance with multiple threads. In addition to our other tests, this benchmark allows us to determine operational bandwidth under heavy load. Each of our tests with the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G Solid State Drive were consistent, and the best results obtained were used in the chart below. Because this benchmark uses compressed data, sequential file transfer (write) speeds are reported lower than with other tools using uncompressed data. CrystalDiskMark 3.0 reports sequential speeds at 500.7 MB/s read and 253.1 MB/s write. 512K results reached 445.4 MB/s read and 256.0 MB/s write performance.
For this section, we will concentrate on the operational IOPS performance using compressed data. 4K tests produced 31.29 read and 80.06 write performance. Displayed in the chart below, the maximum 4KB queue depth 32 IOPS performance results for several enthusiast-level storage products illustrate which products offer the best operation under load:
In the next section, we continue our testing using Iometer to measure input/output performance...
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Comments
First, the comparison of a OWC 120GB drive to OCZ's 240GB drives.
In this class 240GB drives are always faster.
Second, by not testing (or mentioning) the OWC extreme6, you completely missed that it now uses a different Sandforce controller! It uses the 2282, and is (as of now) the only drive to do so.
From your SandForce SF-2000 Series SSD Processor Overview:
"High-IO consumer systems will be well suited for the flagship consumer SSD processor: SF-2282. The SandForce SD-2282 is virtually an eight-channel/sixteen lane enterprise drive with MLC NAND, and won't be produced in the same quantities as other controllers."
What a shame to miss such a useful and helpful opportunity.
Had OWC offer other products or capacities, we'd use them. Besides, the difference would be less than 5% max.
As OWC seems to be a very customer friendly small shop, maybe you could just ask your contact?
This is a potential major difference in hardware, as your site had highlighted in your SandForce Processor Overview.
Kudos on even having that bye the way.
Hadn't seen that elsewhere, even the SandForce site.
I'm like many, who need experts to help find the differences.
I refer to the OWC 240GB and 480GB extreme6 drives with a "-T" part number as using the 2282 controller.
The OWC 120GB extreme6 drives with a "T" part number suffix still use the 2281, as you state in the review.
I should also mention that I have both a OCZ 120GB max IOPS, a OWC 120GB extreme6, and a pair of OWC 240 extreme6 drives.
I cloned my old HD (with Intel RST 10.6) onto all four drives and ran AS SSD benches, which I'll post later.
In brief OCZ 120 max IOPS was slowest, OWC 120GB extreme6 was quite a bit faster, and a OWC 240 extreme6 flat blew the others away.
Mind, this was just a quick test of just my drive set-up, but every thing was at least equal.
I just took the SSDs as shipped, cloned a HD and ran a canned test.
My results were:
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 MI Overall = 356
OWC 120GB Mercury Extreme6 Overall = 373
OWC 240GB Mercury Extreme6 Overall = 489
Is that much of a difference that I might notice in doing video transcoding?
Thanks