Intel SRT - Application Performance
While the last batch of tests may have been uninspiring, SRT demonstrated what its capable of when measuring Windows 7 boot times. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB became 42% faster when paired with the Kingston SSDNow V+ 180 64GB cache drive, reducing the load time by almost 13 seconds. Interestingly, Intel's SRT technology provided the same performance as Seagate's Momentus XT 500GB.
We experienced similarly remarkable results when measuring Windows 7 multi-tasking performance, with application load time reduced from 28.2 seconds to just 10.5. With a threefold increase, our SSD/HDD combo offered roughly half the performance of today's SSDs, while the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB completely bombed out at 28.2 seconds – possibly due to its much smaller SSD cache.
The single application load time was also incredible as Adobe Photoshop CS4 loaded in just 2.6 seconds, or four times faster than the standalone Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB.
While the previous real-world tests showed excellent performance gains, neither the SRT-backed Hitachi Deskstar nor the Seagate Momentus XT offered a tangible improvement.