Test System

Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD7 (Supplied by Gigabyte)
Processors: Intel 975 EE (Supplied by AVADirect)
Memory: Corsair Dominator 1600 MHz Triple Channel Kit
Graphics Card: Leadtek Quadro FX1700 (Supplied by Leadtek)
Enclosure: Lian Li V2000
Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P SE2 (Supplied by Noctua)
SAS Controller: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i (Supplied by LSI)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate X64

You can read more about TweakTown's Storage Product Testing Workstation and the procedures followed to test products in this article.

In 2010 we will begin using the GIGABYTE X58A-UD7 for all our storage product tests. The X58A-UD7 offers both SATA 6G and USB 3.0; features not found on our previous years ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer. In the coming weeks we will have a full report on the X58A-UD7's full capabilities and even a dedicated article showing the storage performance and features.

In the charts showing other products for comparison, you will find the RunCore Pro V, RunCore's SandForce 1500 with MLC flash. When the tests were ran we were sitting in our hotel room at CES. We didn't realize at the time that the motherboard was operating in IDE mode. Ideally solid state drives will be used in AHCI mode. In the coming days we will have new benchmarks with the RunCore Pro V, Crucial RealSSD C300 and OCZ Vertex II Pro all on the same GIGABYTE X58A-UD7. Also, all other benchmark results in this review were tested on the ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer.

ATTO Baseline Performance

Version and / or Patch Used: 2.34

ATTO is used by many disk manufacturers to determine the read and write speeds that will be presented to customers.

The ATTO test shows us what a drive is capable of doing under the best circumstances. Here we see the RealSSD C300 blowing past the limits of SATA 3Gbps in read speed. The write speeds are still very good, but the read speed numbers really steal the show.