Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD 1TB Review (Page 9 of 10)

Page 9 - Benchmark: PCMark 10

About PCMark 10

PCMark 10 is the latest version in our series of industry standard PC benchmarks. Updated for Windows 10 with new and improved workloads, PCMark 10 is also faster and easier to use.

PCMark 10 features a comprehensive set of tests that cover the wide variety of tasks performed in the modern workplace. With a range of performance tests, custom run options, Battery Life Profile, and new Storage benchmarks, PCMark 10 is the complete PC benchmark for the modern office.

From: Developer's Page


PCMark 10 is the latest version of the popular full system benchmark from UL. We used PCMark 10's Full System Drive Benchmark to test the performance of the Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850 1TB. According to UL, the Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The following traces were used and defined as follows:

boo: Booting Windows 10
sacr: Adobe Acrobat - starting the application until usable
saft: Adobe After Effects - starting the application until usable
sill: Adobe Illustrator - starting the application until usable
spre: Adobe Premiere Pro - starting the application until usable
slig: Adobe Lightroom - starting the application until usable
sps: Adobe Photoshop - starting the application until usable
bf: Battlefield V - starting the game until the main menu
cod: Call of Duty Black Ops 4 - starting the game until the main menu
ow: Overwatch - starting the game until main menu
aft: Using Adobe After Effects
exc: Using Microsoft Excel
ill: Using Adobe Illustrator
ind: Using Adobe InDesign
pow: Using Microsoft PowerPoint
psh: Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use)
psl: Using Adobe Photoshop (light use)
cp1: Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test)
cp2: Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test)
cp3: Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test)
cps1: Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test)
cps2: Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test)
cps3: Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test)

As it can be seen in our graphs above, the WD_BLACK SN850 1TB delivered exceptional performance overall. It was simply not in the same league as other tested PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives; handily beating them by a wide margin. The final score tells a lot of the story, but the SN850 is even more impressive as we look at the throughput of each of the 23 traces used. In these simulated real-life workloads, the SN850 1TB was basically untouchable in the very vast majority of the tests. There were only two exceptions, where the Kingston KC2500 1TB came dangerously close, and one where the KC2500 actually beat the SN850 by 2 points. In the rest of the tests, especially in the one where large ISO files were being copied, the simple large file workload allowed the SN850 1TB to unleash its ultra-high peak potential even beyond the AN1500 2TB, which features two SN730 SSDs in RAID 0.


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 8.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 10
9. Benchmark: PCMark 10
10. Conclusion