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Our next chart will depict all SSDs that we have tested, including RAID configurations and RAID configured Cards.  Just to demonstrate that Intel is the only manufacturer to bring in 3 SSDs of different configurations, we have decided to include all 3. Our Intel 160GB X25m was swapped out for the new 320 Series 300GB in the Acer Timeline 1810T …

Following our reviews of the Areca 1880 RAID Card and LSI 9260-8i MegaRAID Card, we are going to evaluate the LSI 9265-8i MegaRAID Card, an eight-port PCI Express SATA+SAS RAID Controller that is configured for 6Gb/s devices.  With the speed and power of SSDs reinventing mainstream storage, RAID card manufacturers are challenged to deliver a product that can handle the …

EXTERNAL CHARACTERISTICS This new LSI card is composed of a very small Low-profile MD2 form factor, which measures 6.6 X 2.536, this keeps the footprint of the card very small, and eases installation. LSI went out of the way to keep this card small, instead of expanding the size of the card for this updated revision of the 9260, they …

LSI MEGARAID STORAGE MANAGER The LSI MegaRAID Storage Manager is an intuitive easy-to-use graphical interface to set up and control the raid card, and the virtual drives that you create. Again, a quick click will bring the picture to full size for closer examination. Easy to use wizards make this a quick setup procedure and the user can do an …

AS SSD BENCHMARK V.1.6 As much as AS SSD will show you the amazing numbers, alot has to be said of the PCIe interface which eliminates any bottlenecks of SATA 2 and even SATA 3.  Without this, we simply couldnt pull up numbers any where near these speeds as seen here. This is a straight no-cache run here, and the …

HDTUNE v. 4.6 RANDOM BENCH AND EXTRAS HDTune shows some interesting parameters that others do not, and gives some good latency numbers for various file access sizes. LINKED INDEX INTRODUCTION ~ EXTERNAL CHARACTERISTICS ~ BENCHMARK PREP ATTO/CRYSTAL ~ AS SSD ~ HDTUNE PRO ~ WEI/AIDA ~ IOMETER PASSMARK ~ VANTAGE ~ CONCLUSIONS AND THOUGHTS If you want more detailed information …

WIN7 EXPERIENCE INDEX The Win7 Experience Index (WEI) represents Microsofts method of rating computer systems and, more specific to our usage, provides a storage evaluation through a graduated rating system up to 7.9 on pc components and the system as a whole. This benchmark is built into Windows and anyone can use it by simply typing: Go to Win Orb/All …

Iometer 2008.08.18 (Read Transfer) For the enthusiast crowd and enterprise, I have included IOMeter which allows for configurable dataset test file sizes.  We have set the test file to 8gb, so you can see the results are without cache leverage. There are going to be a “few” screens displayed so your patience is appreciated as a few shots are just …

In an all out effort to push maximum IOPS we loaded a 512b random workload 3 workers @ QD 128. The system spiked above 420,000 IOPS a few times but it was very difficult to capture a screenshot.  This was a result of the limitation of our hardware under this extreme loading of my processor which was causing severe “choppiness”. …

DATABASE WORKSTATION PCMARK VANTAGE HDD SUITE In PCMark Vantage the data simply cannot be manipulated, and a result is provided based on the transfer speeds observed in eight simulated user activities. This is also a widely accepted opinion held by many reviewers and storage enthusiasts. Through Vantage, the user gains large benefits in the write-back feature of the  RAID card …

For an enterprise situation the 9265-8i is an absolute winner. The sheer power of both the IOPS and throughput of the RAID controller are, quite simply, unmatched. The IOPS are 4x that of the nearest competitor, and the card boasts a 67 percent improvement in streaming writes. With the ability of this card to replace several other cards, the savings …

Just below that is an innocent looking GeForce logo, and while at first it seems a fairly standard decal, to our surprise when first powering  the card we were greeted with a sleek illuminated GeForce logo. This is  also used to indicate any issues with the power connections. This  illuminated logo was something that was photographed last year before the GTX 580 launch, …

Designed around their flagship GeForce GTX 580 video card, they’ve combined two titanic graphics processors into a package roughly the same size, and still manage to produce the quietest dual-GPU video card ever made. With 512 CUDA cores each, two independent NVIDIA GF110 GPUs join to deliver 1024 total cores of graphical processing power. There are six 64-bit memory controllers …

ATTO Disk Benchmark V.2.46 ATTO Disk Benchmark is the quickest and simplest method to determine transfer speeds and utilizes the same test methodology as manufacturers in arriving at performance results.  It simply measures raw sequential transfer speeds for both read and write access at various transfer sizes, producing a very easily understood result. Here we can see the controller using …

The best part of reviewing SSDs is the ever changing atmosphere and pace at which things progress. As a reviewer, one never knows what to expect until a SSD is in our hands and that certainly is the case with the Crucial M4 SATA 3 solid state drive. We were a bit surprised to learn that Crucials new consumer version …