OCZ Synapse 64GB Review (Page 8 of 10)

Page 8 - Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0

About PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0

This Advanced Disk Test, which is part of PerformanceTest, measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. The speed that data can be transferred between memory and a hard disk drive is one of a system's most important performance aspects. There are quite a few factors which have a bearing on this speed and the Advanced Disk Drive Test allows the user to vary most of these factors and compare the results.

The test supports any drive that can be mounted under Windows. Including IDE drives, SCSI, RAID, USB key drives, SATA, networked shared drives and external drives.

Users have the ability to test multiple drives at the same time using multiple threads, and specify:

- The size of the test file used. Larger files mean that the system cache has less of an effect on the test types, which use caching (see below).
- The size of the data block used for each read or write request. Larger blocks mean less requests and can lead to an improvement in performance.
- The choice of four access methods - C/C++ API, Win32 API cached / uncached and raw disk access.
- Sequential or random access (seeking plus reading and writing)
- Synchronous and Asynchronous access
- The split between reading and writing

The results of all completed tests may be graphed using our custom graphing components.

From: Developer's Page









PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0's Advanced Disk Test, unlike HD Tune Pro 4.60, generates some awesome graphs right out of the box. It also provides valuable insight in simulating real world performance applications. To make things clear to you, the first group of graphs simulates a database server, followed by a file server, web server, and workstation. The reason why we have three graphs for each simulation is because we cannot combine them into one fancy chart -- a rather unfortunate thing. All in all, our configuration with the OCZ Synapse 64GB dramatically improved performance compared to a hard drive only setup, but it is not quite as good as a pure SSD solution. On the other hand, if you run all four simulations at once, the OCZ Synapse will be completely ignored. This is probably due to the fact that our Synapse is only 64GB (With 32GB available for caching), and that is not enough to hold all the temporary files required by this benchmark.


Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Installation, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Conclusion