As with each series of SSDs OCZ launches, they publish an FAQ guide on how to benchmark the drives on their discussion forum. So as usual with the Vertex 2, they gave information on the proper procedcures on benchmarking the Vertex 2 in this thread on their forum.
What makes this FAQ special is that they list their top tier 3rd party review websites, which includes reviewing websites such as TweakTown, MyCE, AnandTech and so on. They consider the 12 websites as ones that properly carry out a wide range of synthetic benchmarks and real world tests.
One thing they make clear in this FAQ is that it is simply not good enough to benchmark an SSD on synthetic tests alone. Sure, while this is one way to compare an SSD against another, let’s not forget that consumers don’t buy an SSD just to run benchmarks on, they buy one and expect their PC to run quick and maintain this performance over the long term.
What real-world testing means is carrying real life everyday tasks an average user may do, such as boot their PC, launch applications, browse the web, install software and so on. Since SSDs may be tweaked towards this type of usage, an SSD that does better in a synthetic benchmark may do worse in the real-world and vice versa.
The OCZ FAQ makes a very good quote from one of Wendy’s reviews on MyCE, one of the top tier 3rd party websites in OCZ’s list.
Further information on why real-world tests is the way to go can be found in this MyCE story.
