Let's do a synthetic test with Sandra, just to see if we can match the results we've seen in HD Tach.

What SANDRA also does (important for an HDD) is to test at several positions of the HD. See, at the outer part of a platter the performance is slower. The drive index test is what I refer to. The higher the better.

The WD Veliciraptor is fast at 99 MB/sec and then the recently tested Patriot SSD shows brilliant performance up to 151 MB/sec speeds, followed by GSkills offering. Up to the Vertex, only the SLC NAND based memory kicks in for the Silicon Power SSD which leads the pack at an amazing 175 MB/sec read performance. But it's no match for the Vertex, Sandra returned a value of 205 MB/sec read performance making it the fastest drive we've ever tested.

Subjective tests

Standard procedure for our HDD/SDD tests is to make a clean install of Windows Vista on the SSD drive.
Playing some games... work a little on it, just basic normal PC usage. And I just have to admit I like it.

Really fast access times, combined with good speed and no noise: What's not to like? Sure there's a slowdown every now and then, especially in small writes; yet, you get that stuff with a traditional HDD just as well.

Very noticeable is system bootup time. Windows Vista boots up in 15 to 20 seconds, which is typically a minute (maybe two) on an average HDD based system. Though in all fairness, the SSD Vista installation is new and thus clean.

For you, as a gamer, we did a subjective test as well. Call of Duty 4. Starting up the game load times feel just so much faster.

• On the Raptor it takes 22 seconds to start up the Ghilly suit level
• On the G.Skill SSD it takes 8-9 seconds to start up the Ghilly suit level
• On the Patriot Warp SSD it takes 8-9 seconds to start up the Ghilly suit level
• On the Skill Titan SSD it takes 8-9 seconds to start up the Ghilly suit level
• On the OCZ Vertex SSD it takes 7-8 seconds to start up the Ghilly suit level

Funny, it seems that we are hitting some sort of bottleneck as load times do not get much faster anymore. Everything your SSD loads into memory, has to processed by your PC. So this is our new challenge to address :)

None the less, remarkable to say at the least. Again, this is a subjective 'real-world' test. Numbers might and likely will differ in different environments / PCs, but one thing is a sure fact, you'll definitely notice a large speed up in level and overall game load times.