Intel SSD and PassMark

Posting the results of the benchmark would be helpful. It would also be helpful to know what parameters the benchmark is using to determine the score that it gives. From looking at the website it is not clear as to how it rates one drive as being better then another.

Your particular drive is probably being given a false low score simply because it is only SATA 3GB/s and not 6GB/s. It's been discussed on these forums in the past that the SATA speed is not really relevant as you will never achieve that 6GB/s speed for the data transfer rate.

So what is more then likely happening is that program detects your drive is only 3GB/s and give it a low rating because of it. The 320 series is recommended because it's other performance numbers, as in actual read/write speeds, reliability and warranty are all better then other SSD drives.

The data transfer rate is important but it's only one part of the equation. It's not uncommon for benchmark tools to have a limited and misleading focus like this program seems to have. It's why 3DMark is mostly BS as it is way too dependent on the CPU and for what it does test on the GPU it's picky about what driver you are using. You can run 3DMark on the same system and get seriously different results based solely on the GPU driver you are using.

That site is also largely basing it's results on the cost of the item. Now that's not a bad thing to be considered but again it depends on what factors it's looking at in order to determine if something is good or not. I can't say for certain but like I said you are probably getting a low score due to your drive only being 3GB/s which is perfectly fine.


Edited by jmaster299 - 02 Feb 2012 at 1:07pm

Well if you are just running the drive benchmark your CPU/GPU should have no affect on the results.

Hopefully DST will chime in on this as he has a much better understanding of drive performance then I do and he should be able to tell you if your drive is performing as it should.

Yeah, as a gamer the important thing about a SSD is that it's faster then a standard HDD and will load your games/programs quicker. For large data storage SSD are just a bad idea because they all cost way too much on the Gigabyte per Dollar scale.

Also as Andy and I have pointed out the Intel does not have the absolute fastest speeds on the market but it does have one of the best track records for reliability. It's why the 320 is still recommended over the "faster" 510 series. The 520 series, a direct replacement for the 320 series, is supposed to be coming out soon.