Tom's Hardware's Summer Guide: 17 SSDs Rounded Up

Benchmark Results: Read/Write Throughput

Read throughput is the most popular performance number, since it has the most direct influence on subjective performance. The faster the SSD can provide data to the system, the less you’ll have to wait.

Keep in mind that low I/O performance may prevent drives from delivering maximum throughput, and you should look at the minimum transfer speed under used SSD conditions if you need a certain minimum performance level.

The clear winner in this discipline is Crucial's RealSSD C300 drive—but only the 256 GB model. Although the 64 GB drive delivers the same maximum read performance north of 300 MB/s, the 64 GB drive writes at less than 80 MB/s compared to the 256 GB’s 200 MB/s. The Intel X25-M SSDs aren’t as strong in sequential writes either, and Western Digital trails the Indilinx/SandForce lineup. All of these typically maintain 200 MB/s write throughput, but drop to somewhat slower levels when heavily used.