The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Enterprise.
To test the performance of Silicon Power's 480GB S80 SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 4.61, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Samsung SSD 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, SanDisk Ultra II, Crucial MX100, SanDisk Extreme Pro, Samsung SSD 850 PRO, Plextor PX-256M6S, Toshiba Q Series Pro, Plextor PX-256M6M, Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA, OCZ Vector 150, OCZ Vertex 450, Silicon Power Slim S55, Samsung SSD 840 EVO, Seagate 600 SSD, SanDisk Extreme II, Plextor PX-256M5M, OCZ Vector, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Samsung SSD 840.
As I mentioned earlier, the S80 is based on Phison's PS3108 controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Silicon Power S80 480GB |
 SanDisk Ultra II 240GB |
According to Silicon Power, the S80 is capable of reading at 510MB/s and writing at 400MB/s when tested with CrystalDiskMark. While the drive performed better than expected when reading, it came up a bit short of its rated speed in CrystalDiskMark's sequential write test.
 Silicon Power S80 480GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 SanDisk Ultra II 240GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
Contrary to what we saw with AS SSD's compression benchmark, the S80 performed much better when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 530.0 MB/s and write at 496.1 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the S80's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the S80 had average read and write speeds of 335.1 MB/s and 308.3 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 359.3 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the S80's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Silicon Power S80 480GB |
 SanDisk Ultra II 240GB |
When tested with ATTO, the S80's read speeds topped out at about 557 MB/s and its write speeds at 535 MB/s.
