OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB SSD Review – Interior Components and Methodology

The heart and sole of all ‘Sandforce Driven’ SSDs is the processor and the SF-2280 and the 6G is well equipped with this as well as 16 modules of Micron 25nm NAND memory (29F128G08CFAAB) for a total of 256GB of RAW memory on board.

blankSandForce equipped SSDs are rather unique, however, because a specific amount of this memory is proprietary to the drives firmware and over provisioning.  In this instance, one module of 16GB is allocated to the firmware and also accounts for 7% over provisioning which benefits the drive in both performance and lifespan.

The firmware and over provisioning provide for another very unique characteristic, in that, if a cell dies within your storage capacity you won’t lose space.  The firmware understands this occurrence and automatically utilizes NAND from the proprietary 16G module and simply remaps the location.  This is totally in contrast to the hard drive where we could watch our storage space decline as corrupt sectors appeared throughout the life of the drive.

TEST SYSTEM AND METHODOLOGY

blankThis is The SSD Review Test Bench and a quick click on the photo will bring it up full size for closer inspection.

  • Our main goal in testing is to ensure that all test results are as accurate as they can be and no anomalies slip through.
  • We conduct all tests three times and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 ‘safe mode’ to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.
  • We prefer to use as many benchmark programs as possible to assist with confirmation of results and provide the reader with the actual tests as received to avoid any confusion when unexpected test benchmarks are received.
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BENCH CONFIGURATION

MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte P67A-UD7 ATX LGA 1155 Intel SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600 SDRAM

GPU: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II OC Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0

POWER: Corsair Professional Series AX850 850W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

CHASSIS: Fractal-Design Define XL ATX Mid Tower Silent Computer Case

CPU COOLER: Corsair H50 High Performance Water CPU Cooler

NETWORK: DiLink Powerline AV Network With D-Link DIR 655 Wifi N Router

DVD: Sony Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24X DVD Writer

STORAGE: 3 x Icy Dock 4×1 SSD Racks for 5.25″ Device Bay

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

Software used for testing by The SSD Review consists of Crystal Disk Mark, HDTune Pro, ATTO Benchmark, HDTach, AS SSD, as well as FutureMark PCMark Vantage.

The first six do a great job of showing us the numbers that we want to see, or don’t want to see in some cases, while PCMark Vantage x64 is an excellent program which recreates tests that mimic the average users activity, all the while providing a medium to measure each.

SSD COMPRESSION AND TESTING FLUCTUATIONS

All SSDs are not created equal and many new SSD enthusiasts realize that when they test their new drive to confirm specifications and ensure all is in order. SandForce controlled SSDs, as in the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G, use compression techniques in storage whereas many others do not. This creates a bit of confusion when enthusiasts test the drive with random data through benchmarking programs such as AS SSD and Crystal Diskmark. The results seem to be lower than the listed specifications.

The results actually present a false portrayal of the drives ability when compared to other drives such as Samsung, Crucial or Intel. It is for this reason that all of our comparison testing is done through PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage HDD Suite simply provides evaluation results based on transfer speeds reached through typical user patterns. Vantage provides a better testing medium, in that, it sees through the typical synthetic benchmarks and provides us with ‘true to life’ results of the drive.
Pg1 – INTRODUCTION

PG2 – INTERIOR COMPONENTS AND TEST METHODOLOGY

PG3 – ATTO DISK BENCHMARK SATA 3 SSD COMPARISON

PG4 – CRYSTAL DISKMARK SATA 3 SSD COMPARISON

PG5 – AS SSD BENCHMARK AND VERTEX 3 SIMILARITIES

PG6 – HDTUNE PRO TESTING

PG7 – PCMARK VANTAGE SATA 3 SSD COMPARISON AND FINAL THOUGHTS

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