SSD or HDD what to choose? Part one

Chapter One: SSD-drive.
Most people now buy laptops for their needs, and must make a decision between getting either an SSD, or HDD, as an important storage component. So which of the two is better to choose? SSD or HDD? There is no exact answer to this question; Each customer has their own needs and you must evaluate the decisions based on those needs, your preferences and of course the budget. Although the prices of solid-state drives are falling, in price and size, the advantage is still decisively hard drives. However, if performance and fast boot time is your basic requirement and money is secondary, then SSD is your choice. In the rest of this article, we’ll make a comparison of SSD and HDD and try to make out the advantages and disadvantages of both.

What is an SSD SSD?
You are making a purchase for a computer and just wondering what data the SSD actually has? For starters, SSD stands for solid-state drive. You are probably familiar with USB flash drives, SSDs can be considered an oversized and more sophisticated version of a modest USB memory stick. As in the memory card, there are no moving parts in the SSD. Most likely, the information is stored in chips. And vice versa, hard drive use a mechanical component with read and write heads to move and read information. This difference, what makes working with SSD much faster. By way of analogy, which is faster? Go across the room to get a book, read the information, or just magically open a book when you need it? Here is a comparison between a hard disk and an SSD drive; HDD simply requires more physical labor (mechanical movement) to get information.
A typical SSD uses what is called a flash-based NAND memory. This is a non-volatile memory type. What does non-volatile mean you ask? The easiest answer is that you can turn off the disk and it will not “forget” what was stored on it.
This is of course a necessary characteristic of any type of permanent memory. In the first days of the SSD, rumors circulated that the stored data would be erased and lost in a few years. Regardless of whether these rumors are certainly not true with today's technologies, you can read information and write to the SSD drive all day long, and you are guaranteed safe and sound data for more than 200 years. In other words, data storage and SSD lifespan can outlast you!
A solid-state drive does not have a mechanical component to read and write data, instead it relies on an embedded processor (“brain”), which is called a controller, and performs a bunch of operations related to reading and writing data.
The controller is a very important factor in determining speed on an SSD. With regard to their decisions related to storage, cache data and data cleaning, you can determine the overall speed. We will not go into the smallest details for the various tasks that it performs, such as error correction, reading and writing, caching, encryption, and garbage collection, here are just a few.
But enough to say that a great controller is different from a good SSD-drive. An example of a fast controller today is the sandforce controller with SATA 3.0 (6 Gb / s) SSD controller, which supports mass recording technology at speeds up to 550 Mb / s. The next generation of the sandforce 3700 controller was announced at the end of 2013, and is enclosed in quotation marks to achieve the fast-paced 1,800 MB / s (read / write speed sequences, as well as 150K / 80K random I / O operations. Finally, you will be surprised at the size SSD drive, and how easy it is to install it after buying it in a store. If you look at the image below, you will see a typical “2.5” sized SSD drive. The technology, enclosed inside, is either a plastic or metal case and looks like a battery: The form factor of the SSD is actually just like an ordinary hDD. It comes in a standard size of 1.8 ”, 2.5” or 3.5 ”, which makes it easy to fit into the case and standard connectors, just like the same size of hard drives. Connector used for these standard sizes with SATA interface. There are small solid-state drives that use what is called a mini-SATA (msata for self-installation) and easily fit into a mini-PCI Express-slot notebook.

Let's look at the main differences between SSD and HDD, affecting their performance and reliability.

SSD (Solid State Drive) - solid state drive. Due to the absence of moving parts, it has a very high read and write speed (for the SATA II standard, the corresponding average speeds are about 2.5 times higher than that of the HDD), almost instantaneous response (about 100 times faster than the average HDD), silent, not heats up, consumes a meager amount of electricity, but has a limited resource in terms of the number of overwrites ("limited" does not mean "small" - now SSD manufacturers provide guaranty for their devices up to 5, and sometimes more years). With some optimization, which I will write about in the next article, you can safely extend your life until obsolescence. of this type drive. Another disadvantage is the higher cost of one gigabyte of memory (compared to the HDD), but this phenomenon is temporary.

HDD (Hard Disk Drive) - good old hard drive. The only positive (in comparison with SSD) differences are reliability and price per 1 gigabyte of memory. If the HDD is made with high quality - it can serve you for more than ten years. Moreover, if the SSD basically fails suddenly (SSD is a microcircuit, mechanical wear of parts is impossible here) and the information on it is practically not recoverable, then the behavior of the HDD can be used to determine its desire to "leave this world" and copy it to another place is vital data. Even if the HDD is out of order completely - you can use the services of the service and recover almost all the data on the disk.
Screenshot of the test read speed SSD OCZ Vertex2 and modern HDD WD5003ABYX in the program HD Tune:

Based on these differences, we can draw the following conclusions:

- SSD We use as a drive for the operating system, games and other large, resource-intensive applications. In this case, we really feel a tremendous performance increase, which is expressed in the download speed of large volumes of data (for example, after transferring the operating system from my HDD to SSD, the FULL reboot time of the configured, optimized Windows 7 (x64) decreased from 80 seconds to 25 sec.)

- HDD We use to store large amounts of data (video, audio, galleries, etc.), so I advise you to create a separate partition on the HDD to install lighter programs (all kinds of ICQ, skype, rocking, writing, watching, etc.) and browsers.

The only competitive option for this tandem is RAID-0 from two HDDs, but I don’t even consider it for the following reasons:
- In any case, RAID-0 is worse in terms of speed than a good SSD;
- In terms of reliability, RAID-0 is worse than HDD, although faster.

In conclusion, I would like to note that installing an SSD as a system drive will most significantly increase the performance of your computer (compared to HDD), especially if you have a limited budget for the upgrade. In the aftermath of such an upgrade, the real effect is felt in almost every aspect of PC operation, given that in most cases low speed read and respond HDD is the "bottleneck", which makes it impossible to reveal their potential to the rest, more productive equipment.

VEGA in Citylink is MUCH cheaper than anywhere else.
The hit of the middle segment of Lenovo K5 Note is 30% cheaper in Citylink
!!! GTX 1070 Gigabyte Stack 3x at an even MORE SUPER price

You can mark you interesting snippets of text,
which will be available on a unique link in the address bar of the browser.

Different SSD: is there a difference?

I.N. 07.11.2015 00:00 Page: 1 of 2 | | print version | | archive

Page one: Entry, participants, stand, testing: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.3 x64, installing games, running games
Page 2: Testing: copying files, archiving, mixing, anti-virus checking, conclusion

Introduction

What is SSD in comparison with HDD? Of course, this is beautiful tsiferki in various test applications, the ability to boast to friends and interlocutors. It has been proven by practice: solid-state drives do, in fact, allow for a good “livening up” of the system. However, there are very few real “live” values. In principle, it is understandable: it is convenient to record the difference in the applications specially sharpened for this, and not in games and so on.

SSD models are different: slow and fast, cheap and expensive. And it is not always possible to put an equal sign between the pairs “cheap” and “slow”, “expensive” and “fast”, it is enough to compare, for example, the prices for Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB and Kingston V310 960 GB. But is there any difference between different categories of SSDs in practice? The question is quite interesting and sometimes causing a lot of very heated debates in various Internet forums.

So, our task today: no "synthetics". Totally. Well, so that life does not seem like sugar, this condition will be supplemented by one more: the processor in the test bench will work in two modes - at the nominal frequency of 3.3 GHz (fixed, Turbo Boost is disabled) and at overclocking to 4.5 GHz. As a result, thanks to our partner, Regard, we will not only compare different models drives, but also check the dependence on CPU overclocking.

Testing participants

For practical testing, several were selected. various drives. Firstly hard driveswhere do without them? The final list of participants was two HDD and four SSD.

HDD Western digital Red 4 TB (WD40EFRX-68WT0N0). Of course, the choice is not the most representative, but in general it may well illustrate the situation with most modern hard drives;

HDD Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB. Quite old, but still quite relevant model of the "notebook" class. Usually among users it is considered that the HDD of the form factor 2.5 "is slower than the counterparts in the" desktop "version 3.5". His testing, apparently, is complicated by the presence of BMG car parking, which is not disabled by the usual settings of the operating system: measurements were much more common than "emissions" - indicators that were significantly different from the average, and for the worse;

SSD GK K3 120 GB. The so-called "Chinese" SSD: one of those that can be found on sale on the well-known marketplace AliExpress and the like. Extremely tempting price tags: about 2,600-2,700 rubles for 120 GB, while the more eminent trademarks “start” from the bar 3,100 rubles and more (at the time of writing this material). But the level of his speed is very sad, judging by our tests. At that time, it was concluded that it was suitable only for a user who was not operating with large amounts of data, let's see how true he is;

SSD Kingston V300 120GB (SV300S37A / 120G). This drive is known to the general public much better and not least thanks to the scandal. On various Internet forums to the address of the V300, and to this day, all taunts are released. However, this is one of the cheapest SSD on the market and due to this, it is in good demand. But how far it is inferior in reality, or is it more unfounded fears, it turns out in the course of the review;

SSD OCZ Vector 180 240 GB (VTR180-25SAT3-240G). This is a higher-class solution: the newest model, new algorithms in the controller microcode for data protection, the platform updated in the hardware, high speed characteristics even in those conditions where the others lose positions. More details can be found in relevant review;

SSD Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB (SHPM2280P2H / 480G). His review was released under the heading " Shake-up”: Unexpectedly for the masses, Kingston turned away from its favorite platform SandForce and in January of this year released the high-speed drive M.2 NGFF with a PCI-Express interface on the Marvell controller. Yes, not anyhow, but 88SS9293. And it is unique: the only solution on this controller that is on sale.
And let Plextor show its M7e at various exhibitions for a long time, but only that. According to the latest rumors, the M7e will be sold in the fall - when it is no longer needed by anyone: HyperX Predator will cover the demand and even a faster Samsung SM951 launched at retail just a month and a half ago (not yet available on the Russian market).

Test stand

Albeit with minor changes, but the same that is used for the usual SSD tests: installed video card radeon R9 280X, and the cooling system is replaced by Thermalright True Spirit 140.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H rev. 1.1 (BIOS version F11a);
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K "Sandy Bridge" 3.3 GHz with overclocking up to 4500 MHz at a voltage of VCore 1.33 V (Turbo Boost is disabled);
Cooling system: Thermalright True Spirit 140;
Thermal Interface: Arctic Cooling MX-2;
Video Card: Sapphire Toxic R9 280X / AMD Radeon R9 280X Tahiti XTL 3 GB GDDR5 (11221-01; copy from this review);
RAM: 2 x 2 GB Corsair Dominator-GT DDR3-2133 ver.7.1 (9-10-9-24; 1.65 V), operating at 1866 MHz with timings 8-8-8-24-1T;
Disk subsystem:

128GB SSF KingFast F8M (mSATA; JMicron JMF667H + 20 nm MLC 128 Gbps SyncNAND Micron; KFJ09001) installed in the mSATA2 slot motherboard - for the operating system;
The test drive was connected to the SATA 6 Gb / s port (AHCI mode enabled), or installed in a PCI-Express x4 slot;

Power supply: Corsair HX750W, 750 watts;
Case: open stand.

Software:

Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 x64 with all current updates;
Drivers:

Regular msahci driver for SATA controller;
Intel Chipset Device Software 9.3.0.1026;
AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega for the video card.

Global operating system settings:

Indexing and defragmentation are disabled;
Antivirus is not installed;
Disabled System Restore;
Sleep mode is disabled, power supply profile - “high performance”, “disable drives - never”;
The paging file is disabled;
Creating a file system using standard Windows 7 operating systems with one partition for the entire volume of media, file system NTFS, cluster size - “standard”, “file compression” is disabled.

Performance testing

Here we are waiting for some subtleties. SSD access to all the cells inside the flash memory chip is almost the same, so there is no difference which of them should be accessed, and therefore neither the location of files, nor the number of partitions is completely unprincipled.

But with HDD everything is much more complicated: the system works with a rotating circle (magnetic plates) and a reading point moving inside it (magnetic heads unit, BMG). Recalling the geometry at a simple level, we will understand that the rotational speed, being constant on the axis, will be different for specific sectors located on the outer edge, middle and inner edge of the plates. That is why read and write speeds will be maximal exactly at the beginning (on the outer edge of the plates) of the volume and fall to the end.

Therefore, for HDD and there are tacit guidelines for markup: the first section should go operating system and to the middle - the most important applications, closer to the end - the archived data, the speed and time of access to which are the least important. And this testing affects exactly the “middle case”. Therefore, if we test the SSD by marking out the entire volume, then we will proceed differently from the HDD. On Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB for tests, one section was created equal to 158 GB (one third of the total volume), located in the middle of the volume, but for Western Digital Red 4 TB, due to its large capacity, a section of 977 GB was created, located in the second quarter volume.

As a result, the obtained figures will be closer to reality than if we thoughtlessly marked them empty for the whole volume and the tests would physically fall on the very beginning of the surface of the plates, which, as already noted, should be given to more urgent needs.

On the dynamic graphs below, the gray bars show the results obtained at the nominal frequency of the processor, and the orange bars show the values in overclocking.

Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.3 x64

Although the rule “no synthetics” was established at the very beginning, one single exception should be made. The Crystal Disk Mark is a super popular test among ordinary users. Completely artificial application, which is usually used to quickly compare the performance of drives.

And it would be fundamentally wrong to completely ignore it, so just run it - in order to then see what is behind the indicators issued to them in reality.

Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB | Western Digital Red 4TB.

GK K3 120 GB | Kingston V300 120GB | OCZ Vector 180 240 GB | Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB.

Install games

What is usually used for? home computer? If we exclude many hours of pastime in various social networks and forums, then the first place is the game. And not licensed compact discs (DVD, CD) and not digital copies (Steam, Origin and others), but the use of so-called “rips” - pirated versions are especially popular.

The essence of such “rips” is that the user downloads a set of installation files to his computer in a special way, which is actually an archive of the installed and appropriately modified game. The volume of such files for games last generation able to shake the imagination of a computer programmer with many years of experience: 20-40 GB - far from uncommon and not a record. According to reviews, on a classic HDD, installing games from similar sources can take more than an hour (which we will check). But for the SSD the question is also interesting: the volumes are rather big and even 10-20% difference in speed characteristics shown in synthetic tests, in theory should lead to a real practical difference in the execution time of operations in such tasks.

But what to do with the legal part? The site is a legal resource and we do not deal with unlicensed software. And at the same time, this is a task that has quite practical application. After some reflection, a “Solomonic decision” was taken: testing was carried out, but the names of the games, like the links to the sources, will not be given. Believe it or not such a test - the reader decides. As well as we will not discuss the legal side. For fans of "licensed purity" I will note: the images were loaded only for tests and were not used "for their intended purpose."

Algorithm testing:

Based on the fact that, in users' computers, as a rule, there is only one SSD and one or several HDDs, all operations are performed inside the drive under test (the folder with the original installation files and the final installation folder) - if you place the original setup files on HDD, it may be the “bottleneck” in testing;
One pre-launch of the installation is performed to test additional packages like Microsoft Visual C ++ Redistributable Packages and DirectX. This measurement is not taken into account in the measurements;
The installation process starts, the time interval is fixed between pressing the “Install” button and the appearance of a message on successful installation;
The test is conducted three times with an intermediate game deletion and a test bench reboot (to minimize the effect of system caching on the test results).

Install game number 1

Source package 25.0 GB, final folder - 25.6 GB, seconds
Less is better

This is the first example of the fact that not all SSDs are useful: the installation speed of this game on GK K3 128 GB is almost identical to that of WD Red. Toshiba's laptop HDD is an outsider. Dependency on overclocking is not at all, except for the most recent case - Kingston HyperX Predator. Most likely, we could get better results if our processor were overclocked even more. But what is the gap: from the HDD WD Red - almost four times, and this is not the slowest HDD.

Install game number 2

The source package is 9.95 GB, the final folder is 10.0 GB, seconds
Less is better

Enable JavaScript to view charts.

Here the numerical values are smaller, but the alignment of forces plus or minus is similar. In general, if you frequently reinstall games, the more powerful the SSD, the better. Not fanaticism, but there is a difference.

Running games

Train Simulator 2015

Version v51.2a. Settings: resolution - 1920 x 1080, anti-aliasing - FXAA + 8 x MSAA, filtering - anisotropic x8, maximum viewing distance, maximum water quality. Measured the load time of the route Faversham P1 - Teynham, conditions - “Autumn, rain, 8:00”. Between measurements, the system was restarted. Calculation - the average value of the results of three measurements.

Train Simulator 2015

Run, seconds
Less is better

Enable JavaScript to view charts.

To my personal surprise, there is absolutely no difference. More precisely, it is: SSD as a whole is 15-20% faster than HDD, but in real terms, 5-7 seconds is, you see, talking about almost nothing.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Settings in “auto”: the quality of the polygonal mesh / shadows / landscape / vegetation / water / post-processing / effects / smoothing in the post-processing is high; tessellation quality is normal, texture quality is a shadow of reality; multisampling - off, ambient light obstruction - HBAO, resolution - 1920 x 1080. Save load time was measured "Frosty Mountains". The system was restarted between measurements. Calculation - the average value of the results of three measurements.

To carry out this test on the stand used, the memory capacity was increased to 8 GB with two Crucial DDR3-1333 memory modules of 2 GB each (all frequencies and timings in the system were left unchanged). The reason for this was that otherwise the game could not start properly - there were error messages about DirectX and low memory (remember: the paging file is disabled in our system).

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Run, seconds
Less is better

Enable JavaScript to view charts.

But with this game, the conversation is quite the opposite: here the transition to SSD is able to provide up to fivefold acceleration of launch and the dependence on the processor manifests itself. And if, for example, for the owners of the Kingston V300 and GK K3, there is little benefit to overclocking the processor, then the owners of the Kingston HyperX Predator are very much recommended - there is a chance to get the game run twice as fast.

The hard disk of the computer determines its performance and the ability to store the desired amount of data. In the market of computer technology can be found SDD and HDD, two main competitors. What is the difference between them and what is better SSD or HDD, we intend to understand this article.

HDD - a hard drive to the past

HDD (hard disc drive, from English. "Hard disk"). The device operates on magnetic plates, which are planted on the motor shaft. The main material used for production is metal. Despite the fact that it is lightweight, the finished product weighs 200-300 grams.

The design of the device contributes to constant noise during operation, so each user hears a continuous buzz.

HDD pluses

Large amount of memory at an affordable price.
High maximum memory capacity.
In case of failure, there are more chances to recover the damaged information.

Cons HDD

Slow read and write speed.
Great weight.
High noise during operation.
Promotes heating of the case.
Hard drive is not desirable to transfer, as it is subject to mechanical stress.
It is not possible to independently open the HDA without consequences for the operation of the device.
In case the information is not available, attempts to restore it can lead to complete data loss.
Fast battery consumption.

List of high-quality HDD

SSD: Solid State Drive

SSD (solid state drive, from the English. "Solid-state drive"). It is distinguished by the absence of mechanical parts, so it can be called a large flash drive. Initially, SSDs were produced according to the type of RAM, but today a completely different technology is used, which allows not to lose information when the computer is turned off.

The main part of the solid-state drive consists of the flash memory itself, the interface of the connected drive and the case. Data is stored on the chip. disk and body. Data is stored on the chip.

Pros SSD

Fast read / write speed.
The absence of removable parts, so the device’s resistance to mechanical damage is very high. During operation, the computer is faced with a constant noise (mechanical action), not to mention the accidental fall of the hard disk.
Minimum weight The average is 50-70 grams, which is 2 times less than that of the HDD.
Spend less energy.
The operating temperature is lower, so the computer overheats more slowly.
Low noise during operation.

Cons SSD

High price.
For a reasonable price, you can count on 512 GB for a reasonable price. Anything more is much more expensive.
Low surge protection.
File overwriting has limited capabilities. A device with MLC technology performs about 10,000 read / write cycles, SLC - 100,000 cycles. This means that the drive is enough for an average of three years.
There may be compatibility issues with Windows.
Inability to recover information. There are no special programs for this. In the event of a voltage jump, 100% of the information will be deleted, since the controller is located on the board, just like the chips.

List of quality SSD

And yet, what is better than SSD or HDD? Indeed, on the one hand an attractive price, and on the other a number of indisputable advantages. Universal devices do not happen, everyone has an opinion on this. Taking into account the pros and cons in each case, the best can be both SSD and HDD.

HDD	SSD
High noise level (up to 32 dB)	Completely silent operation (0 dB)
High probability of mechanical damage	Vibration and mechanical impact do not affect the failure of the device
Low download speed and data transfer	High download speed and data transfer
High energy consumption	Low power consumption (on average, the laptop will work for 1-2 hours longer)
Affordable price	Availability is not for all users.
Large volume	Large volume available at a high price.
High marginal volume	A small range of drives by volume

In conclusion, it should be mentioned that the existing shortcomings of SSD will soon be overcome. Manufacturers will make every effort for this, after which the HDD is likely to become a thing of the past. But, which is better, you decide. Many use two drives at the same time, combining all the advantages during operation.

VEGA in Citylink is MUCH cheaper than anywhere else.
The hit of the middle segment of Lenovo K5 Note is 30% cheaper in Citylink
!!! GTX 1070 Gigabyte Stack 3x at an even MORE SUPER price

You can mark you interesting snippets of text,
which will be available on a unique link in the address bar of the browser.

Different SSD: is there a difference?

I.N. 07.11.2015 00:00 Page: 1 of 2 | | print version | | archive

Page one: Entry, participants, stand, testing: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.3 x64, installing games, running games
Page 2: Testing: copying files, archiving, mixing, anti-virus checking, conclusion

Introduction

So, our task today: no "synthetics". Totally. Well, so that life does not seem like sugar, this condition will be supplemented by one more: the processor in the test bench will work in two modes - at the nominal frequency of 3.3 GHz (fixed, Turbo Boost is disabled) and at overclocking to 4.5 GHz. As a result, thanks to our partner, Regard, we will not only compare different drive models, but also check the dependence on CPU overclocking.

Testing participants

For practical testing several different drives were selected. First of all hard drives, where do without them? The final list of participants was two HDD and four SSD.

HDD Western Digital Red 4TB (WD40EFRX-68WT0N0). Of course, the choice is not the most representative, but in general it may well illustrate the situation with most modern hard drives;

HDD Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB. Quite old, but still quite relevant model of the "notebook" class. Usually among users it is considered that the HDD of the form factor 2.5 "is slower than the counterparts in the" desktop "version 3.5". His testing, apparently, is complicated by the presence of BMG car parking, which is not disabled by the usual settings of the operating system: measurements were much more common than "emissions" - indicators that were significantly different from the average, and for the worse;

SSD GK K3 120 GB. The so-called "Chinese" SSD: one of those that can be found on sale on the well-known marketplace AliExpress and the like. Extremely tempting price tags: about 2,600-2,700 rubles for 120 GB, while the more eminent trademarks “start” from the bar 3,100 rubles and more (at the time of writing this material). But the level of his speed is very sad, judging by our tests. At that time, it was concluded that it was suitable only for a user who was not operating with large amounts of data, let's see how true he is;

SSD Kingston V300 120GB (SV300S37A / 120G). This drive is known to the general public much better and not least thanks to the scandal. On various Internet forums to the address of the V300, and to this day, all taunts are released. However, this is one of the cheapest SSD on the market and due to this, it is in good demand. But how far it is inferior in reality, or is it more unfounded fears, it turns out in the course of the review;

SSD OCZ Vector 180 240 GB (VTR180-25SAT3-240G). This is a higher-class solution: the newest model, new algorithms in the controller microcode for data protection, the platform updated in the hardware, high speed characteristics even in those conditions where the others lose positions. More details can be found in relevant review;

SSD Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB (SHPM2280P2H / 480G). His review was released under the heading " Shake-up”: Unexpectedly for the masses, Kingston turned away from its favorite platform SandForce and in January of this year released the high-speed drive M.2 NGFF with a PCI-Express interface on the Marvell controller. Yes, not anyhow, but 88SS9293. And it is unique: the only solution on this controller that is on sale.
And let Plextor show its M7e at various exhibitions for a long time, but only that. According to the latest rumors, the M7e will be sold in the fall - when it is no longer needed by anyone: HyperX Predator will cover the demand and even a faster Samsung SM951 launched at retail just a month and a half ago (not yet available on the Russian market).

Test stand

Albeit with minor changes, but the same that is used for the usual SSD tests: the Radeon R9 280X graphics card is installed, and the cooling system is replaced with the Thermalright True Spirit 140.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H rev. 1.1 (BIOS version F11a);
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K "Sandy Bridge" 3.3 GHz with overclocking up to 4500 MHz at a voltage of VCore 1.33 V (Turbo Boost is disabled);
Cooling system: Thermalright True Spirit 140;
Thermal Interface: Arctic Cooling MX-2;
Video card: Sapphire Toxic R9 280X / AMD Radeon R9 280X “Tahiti XTL” 3 GB GDDR5 (11221-01; copy from this review);
RAM: 2 x 2 GB Corsair Dominator-GT DDR3-2133 ver.7.1 (9-10-9-24; 1.65 V), operating at 1866 MHz with timings 8-8-8-24-1T;
Disk subsystem:

SSF KingFast F8M 128 GB (mSATA; JMicron JMF667H + 20 nm MLC 128 Gbit SyncNAND Micron; KFJ09001) installed in the motherboard mSATA2 connector - for the operating system;
The test drive was connected to the SATA 6 Gb / s port (AHCI mode enabled), or installed in a PCI-Express x4 slot;

Power supply: Corsair HX750W, 750 watts;
Case: open stand.

Software:

Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 x64 with all current updates;
Drivers:

Regular msahci driver for SATA controller;
Intel Chipset Device Software 9.3.0.1026;
AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega for the video card.

Global operating system settings:

Indexing and defragmentation are disabled;
Antivirus is not installed;
Disabled System Restore;
Sleep mode is disabled, power supply profile - “high performance”, “disable drives - never”;
The paging file is disabled;
Creating a file system using standard Windows 7 operating systems with one partition for the entire amount of media, NTFS file system, cluster size - “standard”, “file compression” is disabled.

Performance testing

Therefore, for HDD, there are also unspoken recommendations on markup: the first section should go to the operating system and to the middle - the most important applications, closer to the end - historical data, the speed and access time to which are the least important. And this testing affects exactly the “middle case”. Therefore, if we test the SSD by marking out the entire volume, then we will proceed differently from the HDD. On Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB for tests, one section was created equal to 158 GB (one third of the total volume), located in the middle of the volume, but for Western Digital Red 4 TB, due to its large capacity, a section of 977 GB was created, located in the second quarter volume.

On the dynamic graphs below, the gray bars show the results obtained at the nominal frequency of the processor, and the orange bars show the values in overclocking.

Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.3 x64

Although the rule “no synthetics” was established at the very beginning, one single exception should be made. Crystal Disk Mark is a super popular test among ordinary users. Completely artificial application, which is usually used to quickly compare the performance of drives.

And it would be fundamentally wrong to completely ignore it, so just run it - in order to then see what is behind the indicators issued to them in reality.

Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB | Western Digital Red 4TB.

GK K3 120 GB | Kingston V300 120GB | OCZ Vector 180 240 GB | Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB.

Install games

What is the home computer usually used for? If we exclude many hours of pastime in various social networks and forums, then the first place goes to the game. And not licensed compact discs (DVD, CD) and not digital copies (Steam, Origin and others), but the use of so-called “rips” - pirated versions are especially popular.

The essence of such “rips” is that the user downloads a set of installation files to his computer in a special way, which is actually an archive of the installed and appropriately modified game. The volume of such files for the latest generation of games can shake the imagination of a programmer with many years of experience: 20-40 GB - far from uncommon and not a record. According to reviews, on a classic HDD, installing games from similar sources can take more than an hour (which we will check). But for the SSD the question is also interesting: the volumes are rather big and even 10-20% difference in speed characteristics shown in synthetic tests, in theory should lead to a real practical difference in the execution time of operations in such tasks.

Algorithm testing:

Assuming that users' computers usually have only one SSD and one or several HDDs, all operations are performed inside the drive under test (the folder with the initial installation files and the final installation folder) - if you place the initial installation files on the HDD, it is may be a “bottleneck” in testing;
One pre-launch of the installation is performed to test additional packages like Microsoft Visual C ++ Redistributable Packages and DirectX. This measurement is not taken into account in the measurements;
The installation process starts, the time interval is fixed between pressing the “Install” button and the appearance of a message on successful installation;
The test is conducted three times with an intermediate game deletion and a test bench reboot (to minimize the effect of system caching on the test results).

Install game number 1

Source package 25.0 GB, final folder - 25.6 GB, seconds
Less is better

Install game number 2

The source package is 9.95 GB, the final folder is 10.0 GB, seconds
Less is better

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Running games

Train Simulator 2015

Train Simulator 2015

Run, seconds
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To my personal surprise, there is absolutely no difference. More precisely, it is: SSD as a whole is 15-20% faster than HDD, but in real terms, 5-7 seconds is, you see, talking about almost nothing.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Run, seconds
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