VisionTek mSATA 480GB SSD Review – Trusted LSI SandForce Speeds with a High Capacity

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of highly compressible data (oFill/1Fill), or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. We have provided the results of testing in highly compressible data on the left and that of highly incompressible data on the right.

A quick comparison between tests conducted with compressible data and that of incompressible data shows us that compressible data is handled much faster.  Although incompressible data represents that of music, photos and video, this won’t affect performance whatsoever and one might only notice the difference in transfer speeds if they were to move large amounts of media from one place to another.  This is typical of the LSI SandForce SSD, as is the characteristically low 4K random write performance seen in both tests.

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.

We were a bit surprised to see sequential write performance drop a bit further, but this is indicative of asycnchronous memory which we believe this is.  This is alo our first glimpse at IOPS and the high of 56K is close to the specificatyions of 60K. In contrast, we felt the AS SSD Copy Benchmark was particularly strong, pulling in three SATA 3 results and very quick transfer times:

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)

You may not see this for long (and it’s 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 use in our benchmark testing.

COMPRESSIBLE DATA

INCOMPRESSIBLE DATA

ASU is fairly reflective of the performance we have seen thus far and provides us with an excellent description of both system and SSD identification in its lower panel.

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

VISIONTEK MSATA 480GB SSD VANTAGE RESULTS

The VisionTek 480GB mSATA SSD is only one of three that we have had in our hands at that capacity, the other two being the Mushkin Atlas 480GB mSATA SSD and the Samsung PM841 512GB mSATA SSD.  The VisionTek mSATA pulled through Vantage testing JUST behind the Samsung (and well ahead of the Mushkin) with 68252 points and a high transfer speed of 401MB/s while testing in Windows Media Center.