Under the same application settings, 256GB SSDs, with their greater densities, provide a lot more stability and endurance than their 128GB counterparts. Whether such large memory devices are actually worth buying at all, especially as soon as this year, has been up for much debate. Below are the benchmark results for some of the 256GB models that are currently available on the market.

In linear read-write tests, almost all the next-gen SSDs displayed a reading speed of 500MB/s. While write performance speeds are never really a memory storage device's strong suit, in this time's benchmark tests, many of the SSD products were surprisingly able to show a speed of at least 480MB/s.

During the random read/write performance test, OCZ's Deneva 2 showed a first rate performance, one that far surpassed that of any entry level SSDs from Vector. SanDisk Extreme II's SSD, whose ranking is similar to that of OCZ, displayed an equally impressive score.

Perhaps due to their use of similar component parts, the bottom three SSDs displayed nearly identical scores under the IOPS test. In times when SSDs show similar performances, the one factor that becomes the most important to consumers is the after sales services provided by the companies. It is worth noting that after enhancing Strontium Hawk through Thrd, its performance has been able to reach up to a level that is akin to those of its first tiered counterparts.

In the random "0 and 1" seq read/write test, the reading and writing speeds of Deneva 2 ended up with similarly impressive performance scores. The scores for Sandisk Extreme II, Strontium Hawk, and SanDisk, likewise, were all relatively high, beating out the performance of the SSDs from last year that utilized SandForce's mainstream controllers.

Looking specifically at the mid-end SSD product lines, Apacer Turboll AS610's accumulated value looks to be at somewhere above the average level. While it is still some distance away from the next gen SSDs, among the mainstream crowd, the AS610 still has the best all around performance.

When testing the SSD read/write speeds using HD Tune Pro, we initially chose to skip on using the “sort data” mode, which ended up obscuring the differences among various branded SSDs (as can be seen above). For the other test platforms, the AHCI control mode had been enabled early on. There is no doubt that the performance differences among different SSDs are still largely determined by the specific settings of the controller components.