G.Skill Phoenix PRO 120GB SSD review -
SSD Performance IO Meter IOPS
IO Meter IOPS performance
New in our tests is IO meter. We brought the ancient application back in rotation as it remains to be the best application to really stress the Random IO performance amongst others of storage devices.
Iometer is a workload creator, it will literally perform massive I/O operations in order to stress the system. To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O's per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks and will completely trash the SSD with random 4KB files, massively stressing the random IO.
We apply our own 4KB Random IO read and write stress test, leave it running for 3 minutes and then note down the average IOPS score in operations per second.
First off read performance. We have very few results as this is a recently added application. If you look at the top winners these are all SandForce1200 based SSDs, really good performance.
Now with Random IO 4KB WRITE performance the ball changes completely ... this is precisely where the SandForce controllers a so incredibly strong, Random IO writes. Both the Corsair P128 (Samsung controller) and original Vertex (Indilinx) run into roughly 2000 operations per second. All the way at the bottom we see the Silicon Power M10 SSD with JMicron controller (no cache memory) merely 500 write IOPS/sec.
And then look at the top winners, all SF1200 products .. it's nearly six to seven times faster than the Indilinx products at this particular feature, a tiny bit slower compared to the Vertex 2 though. But really, that's a normal margin, random even.

Reference screenshot of how we test
G.Skill designed another 8GB low voltage DDR3 kit (2x 4GB) that can be set at 1600 MHz yet still run a CAS latency of 7. And that is truly interesting because the denser the ICs get, the higher latency typically gets.
G.Skill 2x4GB CL7 1600 MHz Trident DDR3 review
We feel that more memory is rather important, and in that trend memory manufacturers have started to increase the density of DIMM modules. Where 1 and 2GB DIMM modules have been the standard, we now see very good progress in 4 GB DIMM modules. Today we\'ll do things a little different, G.Skill designed a 8GB low voltage DDR3 kit (2x 4GB) that can be set at 1600 MHz yet still run a CAS latency of 7. And that is truly interesting because the denser the ICs get, the higher latency typically gets.
G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit review
We test and review the G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit. These kits are optimized for AMD platforms preferably with the new six-core X6 processors, and in specific some ASUS motherboards. The kit we'll be testing today obviously comes from that series and is a 2,000MHz CL7-9-7-24 1.65V 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3 kit with its latest Flare heatsinks.
G.Skill Phoenix PRO 120GB SSD review
The SSD tested today once again is the Phoenix series from G.Skill. After we tested their 100GB Phoenix SSD (which received a very positive review) G.Skill instantly requested if we would like to review the 120GB PRO model. Both drives pretty much are the same thing, same controller ... The 100GB Phoenix uses Samsung memory though but the trick is that there is 20GB extra volume space available on the new 120GB Pro (compared to the 100GB model) for nearly the same price. A new Firmware for the SandForce 1200 based controller that is inside this 120GB model simply reserves less NAND flash memory for its data-compression scheme. As a result the overall write performance could be a tiny bit slower, but only a few percent as best. It however will give you 20 GB more space to play around with at the same price. And since price per GB is everything in the land of SSDs -- this certainly is a significant for any vendor and for you as an end-user.
