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 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, 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 840 Pro, Kingston SDNow V300, Silicon Power S70, Plextor PX-256M5P, OCZ Vertex 4, Kingston HyperX 3K, and SanDisk Extreme.
As I mentioned earlier, the Ultra Plus is based on Marvell's 88SS9175 controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
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.
 SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD 256GB |
 Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB |
According to SanDisk, the 256GB Ultra Plus is capable of reading at 530 MB/s and writing at 445 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
 SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The Ultra Plus performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 494.5 MB/s and write at 434.1 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the Ultra Plus' read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the Ultra Plus had average read and write speeds of 433.8 MB/s and 315.2 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 383.6 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Ultra Plus' 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.
 SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD 256GB |
 Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB |
When tested with ATTO, the Ultra Plus' read speeds topped out at about 531 MB/s and its write speeds at 433 MB/s.
