Round Up Test: SandForce 2 SSD

And the Winner is…

After calculating results from the three benchmarks, we finally have our final results. Let’s see the following graph first.

We found that four SSDs in our test, the Kingston HyperX, Corsair Force GT 3, OCZ Vertex 3, and Team Xtreem S3, are all almost equally fast, with only minimal performance differences to set them apart. Meanwhile, because of its different memory type, the OCZ Agility 3 comes in at last place in terms of data transfer speed. How about their price-performance ratios? See the graph below to read our measurements on that particular matter.

With a retail price of US$ 188 during time of writing, the Team Xtreem S3 is the most affordable 120 GB SandForce 2 SSD in this comparison test. In this regard, Corsair Force GT 3 takes second place, while the OCZ Agility 3 with its asynchronous memory placed third.

Best of the Best Performer

Based on our experience, SandForce 2 SSDs (with SATA 6 Gbps connection) is the fastest storage solution available today. That is, of course, aside from PCIe-based SSDs that are meant for a different type of consumers. Besides, some PCIe-based SSDs are actually slower than SATA 6 Gbps SSDs. So, in the end, buying a SandForce 2 SSD (with SATA 6 Gbps interface) is a matter of selecting the best out of the fastest drives.

Performance

From the five SandForce 2 SATA 6 Gbps SSDs in our test, four of them displayed impressively high performance in our test. Scores from these four SSDs are almost identical. They are:

Kingston HyperX

OCZ Vertex 3

Corsair Force GT 3

Team Xtreem S3

By observing the final performance scores, one of these may appear to be faster than the others. But with less than 1% performance gap, the margin is way too small to be noticeable in daily usage. Suffice to say, you won’t feel the difference between these SSDs.

Overall Best

If money is no object, the Kingston HyperX would be our choice. This SSD comes complete with a bracket that will aid installation in your desktop casing and an external USB enclosure that allows you to change it (or your old laptop’s HDD) into an external storage media. Kingston even encloses extra screws along with appropriate screwdriver in the package box.

Performance wise, Kingston HyperX takes top position in PCMark 7. That is a good indication of its real-life performance.

Best Value

Want to crank up your computer’s speed without breaking the bank? Team’s Xtreem S3 120 GB is the right choice, at least during the time of writing of this article.

With a retail price of only US$ 188, Team Xtreem S3 is the most affordable SandForce 2 SSD available in Indonesia. It might well be the least expensive 120 GB SATA 6Gbps SSD in the market today.

Conclusions

Any one of the four top-performer in this comparison test can be your choice for the ultimate system performance. Prices are moving down (hopefully), so feel free to pick a different choice other than our top pick. Their performance is also identical to one another. You can suit the choice to your budget and personal preference without worrying about ending up with the slower one.

Finally, as their price is getting lower, we recommend you to consider investing in an SSD when building a system, especially when your computer is based on fast processors such as the Intel Core i7 or AMD FX series. Without a fast storage media, your system’s overall performance will suffer due to data transfer bottleneck. This is also true for older systems. When you swap your HDD for an SSD, the performance increase is simply sensational!