48 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|NOV 08 |www.maximumpc.com
Mtron’s SSD Pro 7500 is the first 3.5-inch
SSD we’ve tested, and it’s a welcome addi-
tion to our rig if for no other reason than its
size. We don’t have to fuss with adapters to
attach this SSD to our PC. It’s a small thing,
but it’s a feature we wish more SSD manu-
facturers would adopt.
Mtron’s Pro 7500 exceeded our perfor-
mance expectations on sustained transfer
read rates, putting up a respectable show-
ing that was mere megabytes-per-second
behind the second-place SSD, Imation’s
Pro 7000, and 14 percent behind our speed
leader, Memoright’s 64GB SSD. The drive de-
livered write speeds comparable to the other
SLC SSDs, capping out at 84.2MB/s. This
synthetic performance was reflected in our
real-world tests, with the Mtron Pro 7500plowing through our Premiere Pro test in
8:17—a minute and change behind
the Memoright SSD, but second
place nonetheless.
The Mtron Pro 7500
didn’t perform quite
as well as we ex-
pected in PCMark
Vantage, but it still
ran just 2 to 4 percent
slower than a majority of
the SSDs here. We’re confident
that the Mtron Pro 7500 would be
able to hold its own if you were to use
it as a primary drive for your OS.
We were surprised to find Mtron’s
SSD using a SATA bridge to connect to an
internal ATA-133 interface. While it might
add slightly to the cost of the drive, we’d be
curious to see whether a true SATA 3Gb/s
connection could pull even faster speeds out
of this above-average SSD.
Its speeds are good, but the biggest prob-
lem with Mtron’s SSD is that its performance
doesn’t reflect the $500 price premium sepa-
rating this SSD from Samsung’s. The Mtron’s
read rates are just 8 percent faster than
those posted by Samsung’s SSD, and the dif-ference between the two in our Premiere Pro
benchmark is a mere 26 seconds. We love
performance, but these meager improve-
ments don’t warrant the added cost.Like Samsung and OCZ, Imation has part-
nered with Mtron to use the latter’s controller
technology in its SSDs. As you might expect,
the companies’ 64GB drives perform similarly.
Still, a few subtle diff erences exist between
the Mtron and Imation SSDs.
Imation’s Pro 7000 squeaks out 2MB/s
extra in its sustained read transfer rates yet is
0.4MB/s slower than the Mtron Pro 7500 SSD
in write speeds. The two drives off er identical
performance in their random access read mea-
surements and diff er by a scant 0.2 millisec-
onds in their random access write timings.
Aft er seeing the tiny speed gap in the
synthetic tests, we expected the real-world
benchmark scores of the Pro 7000 and Pro7500 to be similar. However, Mtron’s Pro 7500
beat out Imation’s Pro 7000 by 17 seconds in
our real-world fi le encoding test. By a lesser
percentage, the Mtron SSD also beat Imation’s
device in our PCMark Vantage suite.
It appears that, like the Mtron Pro 7500, the
Imation Pro 7000 completely fi lls the pipe of its
ATA-133 interface on its sustained read transfer
rates. Although the Imation Pro 7000 is one of
the faster SSDs we’ve tested, we’d be curious to
see if a straight-up SATA 3Gb/s version would
be able to push past its 99MB/s speed cap. Thedrive’s write speeds still fall below its interface
measurement, so we doubt we’d see much of an
improvement there.
Don’t let the numbers fool you: Although
it appears to be an older drive due to its model
number, Imation’s Pro 7000 is completely com-
petitive with Mtron’s Pro 7500. In fact, their
benchmark numbers are close enough that we
wouldn’t be surprised to fi nd a near-identical
underlying hardware were we to crack the
drives open and check out their insides. That
said, when we compare Imation’s Pro 7000 to the
SSD market as a whole, we don’t fi nd enough
of a performance diff erence to recommend this
SSD over less-expensive models.The Mtron Pro 7500 offers
excellent speeds, but
they’re not much better
than previous editions of
the drive.Imation’s SSD is actually
an Mtron Pro 7000: The
two companies have
united to offer solid-
state drives under two
separate brands.VERDICT$1,370 MSRP, http://www.mtron.net^6
MTRON SSD PRO 7500VERDICT$1,300 MSRP, http://www.imation.com^6
IMATION SOLID STATE DRIVE PRO 7000Imation Solid
State Drive Pro
7000
Killer read performance
for a killer price premium
Mtron SSD
Pro 7500
High cost offsets solid
performance
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