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 Seagate 600 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 SanDisk Extreme II, OCZ Vector, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Samsung SSD 840, Kingston Ultra Plus, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Agility 4, Kingston SSDNow V300, Kingston HyperX 3K and SanDisk Extreme.
As I mentioned earlier, Seagate's 600 SSD is based on Link-a-Media's LM87800 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.
 Seagate 600 SSD 240GB |
 SanDisk Extreme II SSD 240GB |
According to Seage, the 240GB 600 SSD is capable of reading at 550 MB/s and writing at 450 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed better than expected when writing, it came up a bit short in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read speed test.
 Seagate 600 SSD 240GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 SanDisk Extreme II SSD 240GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The 600 SSD performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 501.5 MB/s and write at 460.6 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the 600 SSD'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 600 SSD had average read and write speeds of 414.7 MB/s and 382.4 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 354.4 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the 600 SSD'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.
 Seagate 600 SSD 240GB |
 SanDisk Extreme II SSD 240GB |
When tested with ATTO, the 600 SSD's read speeds topped out at about 555 MB/s and its write speeds at 470 MB/s.
