The elevator pitch for drives like this is that you will
see SSD speeds with traditional drive prices.
We've never
seen an SSD in the system requirements before, Forza Motorsport 6: Apex could be one of the most demanding games on Windows right now.
Seeing an SSD of any kind at this price point is welcome, and Acer obliged by offering up a 256 GB Hynix SATA model.
Not exact matches
Many complained about it breaking down within just a couple of months, and speeds that weren't as fast as they previously
saw from the same
SSD.
«We continue to
see strong growth for
SSD in both PC and data centers and the emerging market for solid - state arrays — storage arrays that are 100 % based on
SSD technology,» Unsworth said.
BUT ARE THE USERS OF BrainPort and other
SSDs truly
seeing?
Not the good (not great) eMMC
SSD figures and that fact that CPU and GPU performance is starting to overlap some of the lower - end figures I was
seeing on the first round of Ultrabooks.
On the minus side you have only 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB in the base version (we're
seeing a 4 GB, 128 GB version too) and if the
SSD is the same as I tested in the 13 ″ version, it's not as fast as the ASUS UX21 but it's not a slow - coach either.
As you can
see from the slide above, we are looking at a 10.8 inch tablet, 1366x768 resolution, dual core Atom processor, fingerprint reader, Intel graphics (x86 tablet folks), 2 GB of ram, 128 GB
SSD and of course it will be running Windows 8.
First up is CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4 and as we would expect this is were we
see some hardware constraints after all we are taking about a device using an eMMC drive and not an
SSD drive.
4.2 MB / s is a low score for an
SSD and we've
seen 10MB / s on other Windows 8 Baytrail tablets but for this level of CPU performance and the expected uses, acceptable.
On second viewing, I
see our car - hating hero has
SSD written on the back of his otherwise pristine gi and H106 on the front, meaning this is most definitely an advertisement for Samsung's
SSD Camcorder H106, the world's first 64 GB
SSD HD camcorder available now for just $ 900 from Amazon.
This is what you want to
see when you're looking for a high - end
SSD for gaming.
However, they still fall flat compared to true
SSD performance, and can get quite expensive when purchased in large capacity, so if you've got the money to invest in a hybrid disc, it's often a good idea to
see if you can buy both a small - capacity
SSD and a standard 3.5» HDD, and use those instead of a single disc for increased capacity and performance.
As you can
see here, the Inspiron's mechanical 1 TB hard drive is a lot slower than the G11DF's 256 GB
SSD.
A paper that presented data from Google's data centers found that flash - based solid - state drives found that
SSDs were much less likely to completely fail than mechanical hard drives: «The annual replacement rates of hard disk drives have previously been reported to be 2 - 9 %, which is high compared to the 4 - 10 % of flash drives we
see being replaced in a 4 year period.»
Though it does indeed come standard with an
SSD (a Samsung - made one, in my case), these are of the slower mSATA variety — not PCIe - based disks like we're used to
seeing on other flagship laptops.
I've
seen these files use over 4 GB of space, and, while that may sound like a small amount of space to some, it's a lot of wasted space on a smaller
SSD.
Tech Report ran an 18 - month - long stress test where they wrote as much data to
SSDs as possible to
see when they failed.
As you can
see, the two systems with PCIe
SSDs, the Dell XPS 13 and Blade Stealth, take commanding leads over the more traditional eSATA drives.
The move to M. 2
SSDs in portable laptops has been swift, and it's not at all surprising to
see one in the Stealth.
Most higher configurations instead come with an Intel Core i7 - 7500U processor, and vary in storage, with options for a 500 GB HDD, 1 TB hard HDD, 256 GB
SSD or the 512 GB
seen in our model.
The least expensive laptops we've
seen with an
SSD cost between $ 550 and $ 600, but many cost closer to $ 1,000, with relatively small 256 GB drives.
That price includes everything you
see on the right save for a lower - tier GTX 1060 and half as much solid - state storage (
SSD) capacity in the NVMe format.
While they still aren't quite as fast as an
SSD on paper, the difference you will
see on your PS4 is negligible.
One thing we haven't
seen yet is a truly palm - size Windows 8 touch - screen device — until the Acer Iconia W3, an 8 - inch Windows 8 tablet that pairs with a $ 79 keyboard dock to form a micro version of a desktop all - in - one PC (we tested the $ 429.99 version, the W3 -810-1650, which has a 64 GB solid - state drive — a 32 GB
SSD version is $ 379.99).
The Bolt X unit we
saw packed some of the highest - end components out there, including an Intel Core i7 6700K processor, Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics, 16 GB of RAM, a 2 TB hard drive and 2 500 GB
SSDs.
If you click the Optimize button for an
SSD, you'll
see a brief status message as it trims the current drive, an operation that should complete in a few seconds.
Inside the MateBook unit we
saw was an Intel Core m5 processor, 256 GB
SSD and 8 GB RAM, all powering Windows 10 Pro.
As you can
see from the Surface Pro's CrystalDiskMark results, the machine's
SSD falls behind the Lenovo Yoga 720 13, which was equipped with Samsung's faster PM961 M. 2
SSD.
Thanks to its Intel Core i7 - 6820HQ CPU, 2 GB AMD Radeon Pro 455 discrete graphics processor, and the PCIe - based
SSD, the MacBook Pro was the fastest non-gaming laptop we've
seen on the HandBrake test, with a time of 1 minute, 1 second.
Whenever we
see a Samsung
SSD listed in Device Manager, we tend to expect excellent storage performance.
However, you'll still
see «Solid state drive» listed under the Optimize Drives tool, because Windows can also perform different maintenance tasks to optimize your
SSD, including the ability to inform the drive that certain blocks of data are no longer in use and can be erased making them writable again.
The model we
saw packed an Intel 7700K processor, 32 GB of RAM, 2 TB of storage, a total of 4 500 GB
SSDs, and two Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics cards.
We swapped out the
SSD on a trusty C720 if you want to
see what you might be up against.
As expected, the
SSD's read speeds far outweigh its mediocre write speeds, a trend we
see in most drives like it.
But considering how low the prices of
SSDs have dipped lately, and how much faster solid - state drives make a system feel, we'd really like to
see Digital Storm add an
SSD to at least the Level 3 build, if not the level 2.
Inside has
seen modest and expected upgrades, with the processor coming in 8th Gen Intel Core chipsets in your choice of i5 or i7 variety, 8 or 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and
SSD storage that maxes out at 512 GB on the 13 - incher and 1 TB on the 15 - inch version.