Throughput, Streaming, 4K Testing, Interface
Read performance stays above 200 MB/s across the board. The only drive that's noticeably faster than the crowd is Crucial’s new RealSSD C300, but that unit requires a SATA 6Gb/s interface to perform, and it has its performance drawbacks on writes.
If Intel’s X25-M drive could maintain its read performance level on writes, it would probably be the undisputed winner...but it can’t. Intel stays between 82 and 104 MB/s sequential write throughut, and this review taught us to appreciate consistent performance. The new JMicron drives vary, despite TRIM support, which might be due to the Highpoint/Marvell SATA 6Gb/s controller we’re using. In any case, it doesn’t matter much. We know from our Indilinx drive results that the controller handles TRIM well, and ultimately what counts most is effective performance.
Crucial and Intel are extremely strong at 4K random reads. Toshiba, Kingston, and Western Digital are almost unbelievably weak here. However, WD’s data sheet doesn’t lie, only promising up to 5,000 I/Os per second.
