PCMark 7: SSD Performance Disappointment
| Specifications | Asus K53E | Asus Eee Slate |
|---|---|---|
| PCMark Overall | 2419 PCMarks | 1508 PCMarks |
| Lightweight Score | 1913 PCMarks | 1287 PCMarks |
| Productivity Score | 1461 PCMarks | 1100 PCMarks |
| Video Playback and Transcoding | 22.99 FPS | 18.58 FPS |
| Video Playback and Transcoding - Downscaling | 17.39241 MB/s | 1.23366 MB/s |
| System Storage - Gaming | 3.38 MB/s | 10.62 MB/s |
| Graphics - DX9 | 15.38 FPS | 3.44 FPS |
| Image Manipulation | 9.26 Mpx/s | 4.87 Mpx/s |
| System Storage - Importing Pictures | 5.20 MB/s | 4.69 MB/s |
| Web Browsing and Decrypting / Web Browsing | 10.46 pages/s | 5.44 pages/s |
| Web Browsing and Decrypting / Data Decrypting | 78.87 MB/s | 28.77 MB/s |
| System Storage - Windows Defender | 1.08 MB/s | 4.20 MB/s |
| Web Browsing With 3 Tabs | 11.68 pages/s | 6.13 pages/s |
| System Storage - Adding Music | 1.07 MB/s | 1.22 MB/s |
| System Storage - Starting Applications | 2.09 MB/s | 12.16 MB/s |
| Text Editing | 9.95 operations/s | 0.56 operations/s |
It's no surprise to see the K53E win in nearly every benchmark. But the Eee Slate excels in the storage test thanks to its 64 GB SSD. The only aberration is the Importing Pictures metric, where the K53E beats the Eee Slate.
The Eee Slate does poorly in this test because its SSD chronically suffers from poor random write performance. Normally, this is where SSDs utterly trash their magnetic predecessors, but Asus chose the SanDisk SSD P4, which seems to be an exception. No doubt, this is a situation where "my HDD is faster than your SSD."
Perhaps Asus should have chosen a better SSD. Even our older Seagate Momentus 5400.6 beats the SSD P4, with random 4 KB writes as low as 200 IOPS (.77 MB/s), while the current Momentus XT hits 338 IOPS (1.32 MB/s).