SSD performance is more multi-discipline decathlon than single-distance time trial.

A drive that delivers impressive peak performance doesn't always deliver the goods in random access workloads, for instance. Intel says it's put a lot of work into tuning the SandForce SF-2281 controller to improve performance and reliability.

But the results aren't always obvious in our benchmark tests.

Synthetic drive performance, compressible data

Synthetic drive performance, incompressible data

Synthetic drive performance, 4K Random

Application performance