Crucial BX500 960GB Review (Page 8 of 11)

Page 8 - Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0

About PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0

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 9.0's Advanced Disk Test, unlike HD Tune Pro 5.70, 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 graph simulates a database server, followed by a file server, web server, and workstation. Obviously, PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0 uses highly compressible data in most tests some controllers can really take advantage of. However, it also requires high IOPS capabilities for the best score. In the past, Marvell and Indilinx based drives perform pretty well in this test. One thing clear is the Crucial BX500 960GB provided reasonably flat graphs, which is excellent if you are looking for consistent performance.

Overall, this SATA solid state drive's performance was acceptable, but fell behind the competition. With results of 23.45MB/s, 141.57MB/s, 411.32MB/s, and 52.68MB/s, these scores reveal the true budget nature of this drive. These results were quite close to the BX500 480GB at 23.93MB/s, 152.34MB/s, 394.95MB/s, and 58.10MB/s. It was no match even for the Kingston UV500 480GB, which posted numbers of 76.80MB/s, 343.02MB/s, 422.85MB/s, 80.60MB/s. The Gigabyte UD PRO 256GB posted results of 100.34MB/s, 307.69MB/s, 447.29MB/s, and 65.47MB/s, in the same corresponding order. Meanwhile, the last generation Crucial BX300 240GB was class-leading at 115.56MB/s, 432.77MB/s, 493.12MB/s, and 93.13 MB/s, respectively.


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 5.70
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion