Patriot Blaze 240GB Review (Page 8 of 10)

Page 8 - Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0

About PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0

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




Finally, we get to a benchmark that generates some nice graphs right out of the box. PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0's Advanced Disk Test provides valuable insight in simulating more real world performance applications. The tests simulate a database server, followed by a file server, web server, and workstation, in that order. PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0 uses highly compressible data in most tests, so once again, SandForce based SSDs will really take advantage of this. However, it also requires high IOPS capabilities for the best score. Unfortunately, this seems to be the bane of the Patriot Blaze 240GB. All of the test average speeds are surprisingly low, even in comparison to the OCZ ARC 100. Comparatively, the SanDisk Ultra II pulled in numbers of 105.59MB/s, 345.68MB/s, 433.65MB/s, and 88.68MB/s, completely obliterating its competition. The only good thing is majority of the graphs are flat, which is excellent for consistency in performance.


Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, 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 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Conclusion