Testing Continued - Futuremark

   PCMark Vantage is the newest complete system benchmark tool from Futuremark. While the entire PCMark score is derived from calculating the performance of the entire system as a whole, individual subsystems (such as storage) are tested in a number of different ways in order to score each component. It's the storage scores we're going to focus on most here.

     Here is spectacular highlight of the OCZ solid state drive capabilities. The two operations simulated in the benchmark rely mostly on a random access pattern so the mechanical latencies of the standard hard drives really cripple their performance. In this aspect, the OCZ SSD is able to finish the operations faster due to the higher sustained transfer rates.

     The OCZ SSD pretty much lays the smack down on conventional hard drives in Application loading and Gaming tests nearly doubling the transfer rate of the Raptor in both instances. Again, random access is the dominant pattern here, but it get a little deeper than that. Most applications have several smaller files (or libraries) that are loaded/accessed so the read heads are being directed to a new platter position a lot more often. In the case of a slow spindle speed drive, like the Toshiba, it spends more time waiting on data than it does actually reading it.

     Getting into the multimedia realm of PC use, PCMark Vantage can benchmark general Media Center usage as well as simulate Video Editing tasks. The lower speed Toshiba struggles to keep its presence between the high platter speed Raptor and the OCZ SSD.

Page 1:  Intro Page 2:  Up Close Page 3:  Testing (Part 1) Page 4:  Testing (Part 2) Page 5:  Testing (Part 3) Page 6:  Conclusion