OWC Mercury AccelsiorM PCIe mSATA Controller Review

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of raw (0/1 Fill/compressible) or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Many new SandForce Driven SSD owners who cant wait to test the performance of their SSD often grab this program and run a quick test, not realizing that they are testing with incompressible data rather than compressible data used in testing by manufacturers.  We have provided compressible (oFill) results on the left with incompressible (random data) results on the right.

Performance in Crystal DiskMark is pretty much as expected for the sequential transfer speeds but we might have like to see low 4k random write performance a bit higher.  Once again, this appears to be a limitation of the ASMedia controller.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.6

Up until recently, AS SSD was the only benchmark created specifically for SSD testing and it uses incompressible data.  AS SSD, for the most part, gives us the worst case scenario in SSD transfer speeds because of its use of incompressible data and many enthusiasts like to AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

AS SSD confirms what we say in Crystal DiskMark and takes it a step further by givin an idea of what IOPS performance we might see. As well, the AS SSD Copy Bench results are very encouraging and actually surpass results we have seen in some typical SSDs.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)

You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading!  Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing.

Once again, Anvil confirms much of what we have seen and provides us with a clear picture of the AccelsiorM capabilities.  Although it is a SATA 3 capable device, it does restrict your SSD from performing at full power, however, we knew that.  In typical use, the difference is not noticeable and, in fact, right now our main system is running off of the AccelsiorM/XPG combination as its boot drive.