
4K random reads are a piece of cake for most SSDs, as reading happens very quickly and flexibly across the flash memory matrix.

Writes, however, can only happen at block size and involve the full read-modify-erase-write cycle. 4 KB writes are very important, as the majority of files on your drive are below 4 KB and file systems are often based on 4 KB blocks. Since SSD block size is way larger than 4 KB, managing lots of 4 KB writes is a worst-case scenario for SSDs. They then have to read-modify-erase-write their full block size, which is a multiple of 4 KB.

Previous
Next
Summary
- Tom’s Hardware Mainstream SSD Shootout
- The SSD Landscape
- Asax Leopard Hunt II (TS25M64, 128 GB)
- Asax Server One 120 (200 GB)
- Crucial RealSSD C300 (64 GB)
- G.Skill Phoenix FM25S2S (100 GB)
- G.Skill Phoenix Pro (120 GB)
- Intel X25-V (40 GB)
- OCZ Vertex 2 (VTX100G, 100 GB)
- OCZ Vertex 2 (E series, VTX2E120G, 120 GB)
- OWC Mercury Extreme SSD (100 GB)
- RunCore Kylin II SSD (100 GB)
- Test Setup
- Benchmark Results: Access Time
- Benchmark Results: I/O Performance
- Benchmark Results: Read/Write Throughput
- Benchmark Results: 4K Random Reads/Writes And Interface Bandwidth
- Benchmark Results: PCMark Vantage
- Benchmark Results: Power Consumption
- Benchmark Results: Power Efficiency
- Performance Indexes
- Conclusion
- Comparison Table