Shootouts

The Great High-end SSD Shootout

By Kenny Yeo - 17 Jan 2013

Test Setup

Test Setup

The drives were tested on our storage testbed, which has the following system specifications:

  • Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
  • MSI Z68A-GD80 (Intel Z68 chipset)
  • 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 memory
  • MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
  • Windows 7

And this is the list of SSDs tested:

  • ADATA XPG SX900
  • Corsair Neutron GTX
  • Crucial M4
  • Intel SSD 520 Series
  • Kingston HyperX 3K
  • OCZ Vector
  • Plextor M5 Pro
  • SanDisk Extreme
  • Strontium Hawk
  • Transcend SSD720

Given the nature of this shootout, we are expecting a close fight and it will be interesting to see which drive will come out tops in the performance stake. Also, this will give us a chance to evaluate the different controllers in the market now as a whole as we have drives using controllers from SandForce, Marvell, Link_A_Media Devices and OCZ.

Additionally, the drives we have here are using a mix of synchronous and toggle mode MLC NAND memory. While toggle mode MLC NAND memory is generally regarded as the quicker of the two, this shootout will also give us the opportunity to make some general conclusions as to whether this generalization is true.

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