| OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Monday, 01 August 2011 | |
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PCMark Vantage HDD TestsPCMark Vantage is an objective hardware performance benchmark tool for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7. PCMark Vantage is well suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista/7 PC: from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops, to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Benchmark Reviews has decided to use the HDD Test Suite to demonstrate simulated real-world storage drive performance in this article. PCMark Vantage runs eight drive tests, each with a specific purpose. Once the benchmarking test were complete, the results are given a PCMark score while the detailed result show actual transaction speeds. The 120GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G Solid State Drive OWCSSDMX6G120T produced a total HDD Test Suite score of 48898 in PCMark Vantage:
Our tests were conducted on an Intel P67 Sandy Bridge motherboard using the onboard SATA 6Gb/s controller with 64-bit Windows 7. Results are displayed in the chart below:
In the next section I share my conclusion and share the final product rating.
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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