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Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64. We are testing the onboard 320 GB 2.5 inch 5,400 rpm drive.
Sadly Sapphire are using another slow 5,400rpm 2.5 inch drive which drags down the overall performance of the system, considerably. We keep feeding back to Sapphire that they should release a version with an SSD inside. A small SSD based EDGE PC wouldn't actually cost much more than a larger mechanical version, considering the recent price drops of solid state technology.
In real world terms, the EDGE HD4 takes well over a minute to boot from cold and become responsive in Windows 7. Generally it feels sluggish and applications will take some time to load. Performance in Crystalmark is rated around the 75 MB/S mark for both read and write tests, which is slower than the performance from the VS8, which was already less than stellar. Even the adoption of a quality 7,200 rpm drive would improve this situation a little.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
ATTO shows the same miserable levels of performance, peaking at around 80 MB/s in both sequential read and write. We really would remove this drive, put it into an external USB enclosure and use it for storage. Fitting a quality Solid State Drive into this system would transform it dramatically.
Its a nice little system, but that celeron is a little weak, I was expecting a little more from Intel, even up to the A8 4555m performance, but AMD are all over Intel, with only a little more power demand at the socket.
I actually have the first EDGE and this seems like a decent upgrade. I might pick this up. any availability anywhere? cant find it.
Nice idea, I missed the A8 Edge first time around, that certainly appeals to me more than the celeron v ersion.
The power consumption is incredible, thats less than my light in the bedroom. Celeron is a bit gutless however, but for a media center id love it.
SSD for me of course.
I want to get the EDGE VS8 when I get the cash, i absolutely love the look of it. I will be putting Windows 8 on mine for media. This is also great, but its funny to see AMD walking away with low powered systems ! can’t say that in the high end.
that power consumption figure is crazy, that whole system is taking less than my processor. That is very tempting for a media center in my bedroom, as you could hide it behind the rear of the tv and use a bluetooth remote to get through the screen without a problem.
Why a 320gb 5,400 rpm drive? are they out of their minds. You can save money on the OS, but you have to buy the drive you will never want to use?
I think this review is too positive. that is some dire performance and there are many flaws with this range.
Firstly, the EDGE HD range was atom, then it moved to AMD E450, now its back at Celeron? Meanwhile they have the VS range which is trouncing this HD range, even if its more expensive – so far its only been AMD APU.
To confuse matters, Sapphire want you to save money on the operating system, yet they force you to buy the rubbish hard drive and some of them don’t have bare bones options as far as I can tell.
And why no Linux support? this would be ideal for linux users. I could probably locate some of the drivers, or get them to work, but they should make a linux version of this machine or help the open source market develope for it.
Hey Zardon, it’s been a while ! i was searching you to talk with you about some project.
can we talk in private when you have a moment ?
i hope that you didn’t forget about me 🙂
take care 🙂