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BENCHMARK PROTOCOL AND THE TEST BENCH
This is The SSD Review Test Bench Number One. A quick click on the photo will give you a better look.
In testing, our main objective is to obtain results as pure and as accurate as possible and we want to ensure that no anomalies slip through. Simply put, we want to provide you with the absolute best results the tested hardware can provide. Repetition in testing is standard and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 ‘safe mode’ to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.
In order to validate and confirm our findings, testing is supported by industry accepted benchmark programs. All results are displayed through capture of the actual benchmark for better understanding of the testing process by the reader.
We would like to thank Gigabyte, Corsair, MSI, OCZ, Fractal-Design, and Icy Dock for sponsoring components of our Test Bench.
SSD COMPRESSION AND TESTING FLUCTUATIONS
The Super Talent USB 3.0 Express RC8 flash drive is simply a solid state drive with a USB 3.0 rather than SATA 3 interface.
To accomplish this, there is an ASMedia ASM-1051 USB to SATA bridge which routes information between the USB 3.0 interface and SF-1200 processor seamlessly.
All SSDs are not created equal and many new SSD enthusiasts realize that when they test their new drive to confirm specifications and ensure all is in order. SandForce controlled SSDs use compression techniques in storage whereas many others do not. This creates a bit of confusion when enthusiasts test the drive with random data through benchmarking programs such as AS SSD and Crystal Diskmark (random data sample). The results seem to be lower than the listed specifications.
The results actually present a false portrayal of the drives ability when compared to other drives such as the Samsung 470 Series and Crucial M4 SSDs that we have reviewed previously. It is for this reason that all of our comparison testing is done through PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage HDD Suite simply provides evaluation results based on transfer speeds reached through typical user patterns. Vantage provides a better testing medium, in that, it sees through the typical synthetic benchmarks and provides us with ‘true to life’ results of the drive.
BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
Software used for testing of the Express RC8 consist of Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, ATTO Benchmark, Anvil Storage Utilities, along with FutureMark PCMark Vantage.
All do a great job of showing us the numbers that we want to see, or don’t want to see in some cases, while PCMark Vantage x64 is an excellent program which recreates tests that mimic the average users activity, all the while providing a medium to measure each.
FNET TURBOHDD USB VER. 3.00.19
The Super Talent Express RC8 ships with a software program called TurboHDD which allows the user to run the USB in normal or turbo mode, turbo mode of course pushing the RC8 to its performance limits.
Prior to installing TurboHDD on our system, we took some initial tests and performance was found to be 190MB/s read and 160MB/s write, on average, which are already amazing speeds for any USB 3.0 flash drive.
Lets take a look below at what this baby can do in Turbo mode, which is on by default once installed:
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ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.
Listed specifications for the Express RC8 are 270MB/s read with 240MB/s write and we reached 263MB/s read and 202MB/s write which is not far off. In fact, the results of 190MB/s and 160MB/s that we attained without using TurboHDD are pretty spectacular in themselves.
INDEX
Pg1 – Introduction & Channels Explained
Pg2 – Test Protocol and Initial Tests
Pg3 – Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD & Anvil Pro
Pg4 – A Perfect Match With Ceedo