iPEAK multitasking
We've developed a series of disk-intensive multitasking tests to highlight the impact of seek times and command queuing on hard drive performance. You can get the low-down on these iPEAK-based tests here. The mean service time of each drive is reported in milliseconds, with lower values representing better performance.

Our iPEAK workloads were recorded using a 40GB partition, so they're a little big for the 4GB i-RAM, 16GB ANS-9010, and even the 32GB X25-E. The app had no problems running, but it warned us that I/O requests that referenced areas beyond the drives' respective capacities would be wrapped around to the beginning of each drive. Since there should be no performance difference between the beginning and end of an SSD, the results should be valid.

When configured in a RAID 0 array, the ANS-9010 runs the table in iPEAK, turning in the quickest mean service times across all nine workloads. This RAID setup is notably quicker than running the ANS-9010 in single-drive mode, too. If we average the response time of each config across all workloads, ACard's RAM disk turns in a 0.18-millisecond service time in RAID and a 0.32-millisecond service time in single-drive mode, making it nearly twice as fast when you use both SATA ports.

Of course, the single-drive config's slower performance leaves it vulnerable to the X25-E in some workloads. In four of our multitasking tests, the Extreme just edges out the single-drive ANS-9010. ACard's take on the RAM disk concept is consistently faster than Gigabyte's four-year-old i-RAM, though.