PCMark 8 Advanced Workload
To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.
Without other drives in the chart messing with the y-axis, we get a clear picture of the performance available under different conditions. In the previous set of tests, Samsung's SM951 was slightly faster than Intel's SSD 750s. This set uses the same data; however, with controlled preconditioning, the Intel drives are faster. This is a better representation of performance in a system under heavy to moderate usage. We like to think that these metrics mimic long-term use, after all of the cells have been filled and the drive is forced to clean up dirty pages in the NAND. If a term exists for this condition, it would be client steady state.
If you really want to know which drive delivers the best experience, the service times in client steady state are the most important results to look at. The light workload service time chart best represents what most readers do with their PCs, and we often point to Recovery 4 as a determinant of which product is best.
Based on performance alone, the SSD 750s are better in daily use, particularly as they age and their memory cells are left dirty. But the judgement isn't cut-and-dried as that. Samsung's AHCI-attached SM951, like many Samsung SSDs before it, needs more time to clean up dirty cells through garbage collection and wear-leveling. The test we're running is controlled, so we can't manually extend the idle time past five minutes. If we could stretch it to 10 minutes or more, we suspect that the results would be much closer.
