Intel 525 Multi-Capacity SSD Review – mSATA SSDs Just Became Mainstream

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

• Windows Defender In Use
• Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
• Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
• Starting the Vista Operating System
• Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
• Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
• Cataloging a music library
• Starting applications

INTEL 525 MSATA SSD VANTAGE TEST RESULTS

The give and take of PCMark Vantage HDD Suite testing is that, although it relies significantly on compressible data in it’s test format which displays the typical user experience, it does not provide any way of determining differences when testing with highly incompressible data, or SSDs of the same model but different sizes. In the case of our testing today, all five of the different Intel 525 capacities had almost exact Vantage results, yet our testing thus far shows a distinct difference in performance.

PCMark Vantage is a consumer level benchmark that relies only on typical consumer use testing patterns and this is all that is needed at that level.  It displays results based on what you will normally see, and not synthetic metrics that most could never observe or that are used in very rare instances only.  For instances, would you believe that those magic specifications that manufacturers advertise by, such as 550MB/s read and 520MB/s write performance, are only EVERY utilized less than 1% of the time in your typical daily use?  This article that we posted some time ago will explain this in a bit more detail, and in fact, is probably one of the most valuable documents you will find in learning about SSDs.

Intel’s Total Point Score was 66870 points with a high transfer speed of 413MB/s while testing in Windows Media Center.  As we can see below, the 525 does extremely well against all mSATA SSDs tested to date, remembering of course that our hierarchy chart is based solely on PCMark Vantage Total Points scoring.