SSDs - Which Benchmark Result Matter?

[Damagerous]

There are many benchmark numbers given in SSD reviews. Which of those numbers actually matter for the average end user who is not transferring large amounts of data everyday and just use it as a boot drive for gaming? 

[m0k]

ignore benchmarks, you wont notice 450mb/s vs 515mb/s
look at user reviews
if it has an average of 4/5 or 5/5 you should probably buy it.

whats your budget ?
 

[AlvinPacheco]

Depends on what you are looking for. For me it's the 4K results, that's the speed of small files that always moves, example. loading in games, startup, etc.

[AlvinPacheco]

Watch this

[Aytex]

8 minutes ago, Damagerous said:

There are many benchmark numbers given in SSD reviews. Which of those numbers actually matter for the average end user who is not transferring large amounts of data everyday and just use it as a boot drive for gaming? 

Here is a great tool when looking at user benchmarks 

http://ssd.userbenchmark.com

[zMeul]

random writes and reads, and access times

[Sakkura]

Random read at low queue depth is probably the most important synthetic performance metric. But good reviews will do the analysis of the results for you, giving you the gist.

22 minutes ago, mok said:

ignore benchmarks, you wont notice 450mb/s vs 515mb/s
look at user reviews
if it has an average of 4/5 or 5/5 you should probably buy it.

whats your budget ?
 

Ignore user reviews, they're highly unreliable.

[typographie]

My [limited] understanding of storage benchmarks is that random performance is a closer representation of regular consumer workloads than sequential performance.

 

That being said, SSD benchmarks expose differences that do not necessarily translate to how the drive feels to use. If you buy one of the well-regarded midrange SSDs available today, you're probably not going to feel like your performance is noticeably poorer than the higher-end SDDs unless you run your own benchmarks. SSD reviews/benchmarks aren't useless, but I would recommend paying the most attention to the conclusion section where they usually clarify who the product is for, what it's value proposition actually is, and what the numbers really mean for you.

[BrightCandle]

Random 4k read and write and low QD is what makes up 80% of all the work of a PC (although much less of actual data transferred).

[Damagerous]

Thanks for all the responses! It seems that 4k read and write is the important one to look for. I will also look for real program benchmarks and load/boot times.

 

I think I'm going to wait for the Samsung 960 series to come out before making a decision on which drive to get. Thanks!