|
In our
earlier articles going all the way back
to the launch of the i7 Series CPU we
saw our vogue "need for speed" phrase
being utilised repeatedly. Today is no
different of what has been witnessed
within. Not only has our workstation
built in situ performed remarkably well
and the results back this up, it has
surpassed everyone's expectations.
Utilising the OCZ Vertex as the primary
boot disc and application launcher it
has shown without doubt OCZ have done
their sum's correctly. The synthetic
results speak volumes in this area. The
PCMark 2005 hard drive test has most
certainly shown it has the capabilities
to handle a complex high speed
throughput. Both Everest Ultimate and
HD Tach backing up what was initially
found surprisingly enough as we
sometimes do see an odd anominally
variance creep in with these tests.
However it does show that the claimed
Read Speeds are within their tolerances
which is what we had been ultimately
looking for.
We moved on swiftly to the professional
benchmarks as these are the key to any
good workstation and, as we had brought
our system within a fraction of the
High-speed monster of the SUN Ultra 57
was eager to see its full potential.
The results obtained as seen within
where astonishing.
NVIDIA's driver has most certainly
matured and at times for a while never
expected the 60 point mark in the max
test to be broken. Today, that has most
certainly been well demolished. Not
stopping there the whole remit of tests
within SPEC Viewperf 10 saw figures many
only dream of professionally
reproducing.
Followed swiftly on with
SPECapc
for SolidWorks 2007™
which by all
is a very intensive I/O test of the
system. Once more we were to be
astonished at the result returned and
showed how much influence in certain
sectors the Vertex had to play.
To crosscheck that our mainboard
and CPU had been functioning correctly,
as the results obtained were phenomenal
- we did a swift referral on
Supermicro's X8SAX mainboard with an i7
Intel 3.2GHz, 6GB of memory and the
Vertex. Much to our surprise the
results obtained on the
Intel® X58BP where ever so close.
Some matched dead on others presented
+ / - a minor 0.01 difference within
certain Viewperf tests on the X8SAX.
Completely satisfied no anomalies were
present it proved that both platforms
had achieved remarkable results.
Needless to say many happy NVIDIANS with
big grins will be walking around in
Santa Clara today.
Within Microsoft Windows 7
32-bit. its a bit early yet to fully
comment on the results gained within the
PCMark Vantage as drivers are still in
their infancy and most certainly will
mature within the next 6 months. But
for now we see some very healthy results.
With the readily increase in capacity
these drives will need some form of free
space consolidation/fragmentation
tool. The ever ending discussion of
do SSD's require a fragmentation tool,
or, a free space utility now springs to
the fore in a serious manner. Looking
within afterwards we did note
specifically certain factors addressed
readily last year. New software
offerings from two companies do have
their own configurations enabling free
space consolidation/fragmentation.
Though this is another topic for another
day. What we can stipulate is that both
companies respective software packages
have an impact on speeding up the
overall performance of the drive. This
in turn means a faster constant
sustained output for the already speedy
Vertex.
Therefore
we have to reiterate; "the need for
speed". Yes. Cost in some areas is
slightly prohibitive for some, though we
have to step back and look at the
results obtained. Fast they are; so in
translation productivity output will be
up which in turn means no delays in
getting out the final draft models to
the clients. High-speed productivity
output means more repeat business as
clients today are impressed with fast
outputs that mean they also meet their
tight deadlines and swiftly move onwards
to the next project.
Though in
the final analysis of the whole story
has the OCZ Vertex shown it has what it
takes to compete with the Intel®
X25-M Extreme
series. From what we have witnessed
here today, yes it does and serious
final considerations have to be taken in
our choices of system builds. |
