Now for the most interesting part — testing. We conducted it with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB hard disk drive and Kingston SSDNow V100 64GB. Note that this isn't the fastest in the market (250 MB/s read speed and 145 MB/s write speed), but it's very close to what a regular user may buy for this purpose. The testbed also featured an Intel Core i5-2400 processor, a Gigabyte Z68X-UD4-B3 motherboard, 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1600 (Kingston KHX1600C9D3P1K2/4G, also kindly provided by Gigabyte), and Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit.

First, let's run the latest PCMark 7. It emulates most common user tasks like video encoding, image editing, games and such.

Enabling Smart Response sure looks nice, and the performance is not much lower than that provided by a regular SSD system disk. If you need detailed PCMark 7 results, get them here. If you don't, just know that it's obviously quite normal that only one group of tests — System Storage — demonstrates a difference between three configurations.

But let's not get carried away by awe, because numbers do not show all. What makes this advantage possible? Write caching, if you chose the Maximized mode. Read caching, too. But read caching is not 'proactive.' Remember why solid-state drives are good: their advantage is not measured in megabytes per second but in the subjective "it's become so fast!" Enthusiasts surely know ways of measuring the difference in Windows loading times and application startup speeds by means of precise stopwatches synchronized by multitudes of sensors. But regular users just need to see that something works faster now, otherwise they will simply not bother.

And our tests indicate that, subjectively, Intel Smart Response doesn't speed up bootup. There might be a minor difference, but it's hardly seen with the naked eye. In turn, with an SDD system disk, Windows barely has time to show colorful dots when starting up.

Of course, that wasn't the only observation we made. But in all situations it was more or less the same: resource-critical applications (like Adobe Photoshop and 3D modelling suites) took some time to load, drawing splash screens, application windows, toolbars and such (that was especially noticeable in Maya with its multitude of controls). We do not claim there was no difference at all, but it was hardly seen with the naked eye. When an SSD was used as a system disk, it was simply much faster, and it was easily seen.

Note that after running a program and exiting it, running it again was much faster on all testbeds. But for that we should thank Windows' cache, not Smart Response (given that there's enough RAM for the system cache).

Obviously, Intel Smart Response gives an advantage only when you run an application not for the first time and open files you have once loaded; or when some permanent data is loaded, e.g. a plugin/filter library or some game resources.

Sadly, the advantage ends when Intel Smart Response's control program considers the current files unimportant for caching anymore and instead decides to cache a 10GB movie you once downloaded with a BitTorrent client, then watched a couple of times.

We deliberately do not provide any 'intermediate' results which would demonstrate such benefits of Intel Smart Response as speeding up applications you run for the second or third time. We believe this has already been shown by PCMark 7, the sole purpose of which is to emulate typical user's workflow. And you have already seen that Intel Smart Response does a good job there.

But how will it perform on your PC? Will it have enough cache to speed up loading of Windows, if the day before you spent three hours browsing the Internet, two hours playing Starcraft 2 and four hours working in Adobe Photoshop? Unfortunately, this question is impossible to answer theoretically. Some things will work faster, other will not.

As you can see, our testing wasn't limited to synthetic benchmarks and subjective observations. We also tested a couple of real-life applications taken out of our old and new test methods. Above are interesting results demonstrated by video encoding in VirtualDub with old codecs and settings. A new Sandy Bridge processor had no trouble with it whatsoever (this benchmark was once used to test Intel Pentium 4 CPUs). But this benchmark also created non-standard conditions for the storage system. The SSD system disk did a great job, but Intel Smart Response actually slowed the whole machine down, probably because of some data access conflicts. Don't take it to heart though, and don't think that Intel Smart Response is not suitable for video encoding. Just remember that there are scenarios, in which such caching may actually make a storage system less efficient.

Final thoughts

Speaking of hardware, Intel Z68 combines P67 and H67 chipsets, and it doesn't come cheap. Those who value system 'potential' will surely prefer motherboards on Z68 just to be able to use all features there are. If you need either overclocking and SLI/CrossFire support or built-in graphics, you can just choose a motherboard based on the older P67 or H67 chipsets, any of which is cheaper.

As for the Lucid Virtu technology that will be supported by most Z68-based motherboards, we shall examine each specific implementation in reviews of specific motherboards. For now we can say that, frankly speaking, not many people need to combine built-in and discrete graphics. Especially if that doesn't provide any power-saving benefits or increase the number of simultaneously connected monitors. The video transcoding engine you say? It will be a real advantage only in a few very specific situations.

Therefore we're left with Intel Smart Response Technology as the key reason to buy a Z68 motherboard. Our test results indicate that it does work, but not without problems. The key disadvantage is that it doesn't always give a noticeable performance boost (which is easily provided by an average SSD used as a system disk).

So, if you can afford a solid-state drive capacious enough to hold both the OS and applications, buy one and enjoy its performance. If you cannot afford or do not want to spend money on such a drive, and you use a lot of various applications, you now know how to put a low-capacity SSD to good use. Just remember that you will need to buy a Z68-based motherboard as well.

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