Benchmark time!
First up is my old boot drive. A Maxtor HD with 8mb cache with the disks spinning at 7200rpm.
Connected alone on the ATA100 connector.Xfer Size Sequential Read Sequential Write Random Read Random Write
1 KByte 924.044 KB/sec 3.981 MB/sec 56.354 KB/sec 3.472 MB/sec
2 KBytes 1.821 MB/sec 8.548 MB/sec 7.318 MB/sec 6.603 MB/sec
4 KBytes 5.901 MB/sec 16.095 MB/sec 2.124 MB/sec 12.828 MB/sec
8 KBytes 11.970 MB/sec 25.775 MB/sec 19.497 MB/sec 27.992 MB/sec
16 KBytes 22.312 MB/sec 46.936 MB/sec 11.066 MB/sec 39.931 MB/sec
32 KBytes 41.369 MB/sec 63.029 MB/sec 6.336 MB/sec 51.087 MB/sec
64 KBytes 31.752 MB/sec 75.075 MB/sec 31.729 MB/sec 63.762 MB/sec
128 KBytes 45.392 MB/sec 71.445 MB/sec 31.091 MB/sec 74.294 MB/sec
256 KBytes 49.185 MB/sec 82.091 MB/sec 33.819 MB/sec 78.429 MB/sec
512 KBytes 55.368 MB/sec 83.960 MB/sec 39.464 MB/sec 79.928 MB/sec
1 MByte 55.375 MB/sec 72.271 MB/sec 48.466 MB/sec 82.395 MB/sec
Next up is the current boot drive, a 16gb KingSpec Disk On Module (SSD). Connected alone on the ATA66 connector.Xfer Size Sequential Read Sequential Write Random Read Random Write
1 KByte 4.209 MB/sec 2.050 MB/sec 1.647 MB/sec 461.638 KB/sec
2 KBytes 8.507 MB/sec 4.778 MB/sec 6.489 MB/sec 884.603 KB/sec
4 KBytes 12.572 MB/sec 3.486 MB/sec 10.809 MB/sec 1.777 MB/sec
8 KBytes 21.351 MB/sec 14.735 MB/sec 18.614 MB/sec 3.143 MB/sec
16 KBytes 32.798 MB/sec 14.569 MB/sec 28.554 MB/sec 5.421 MB/sec
32 KBytes 42.985 MB/sec 16.507 MB/sec 39.274 MB/sec 7.666 MB/sec
64 KBytes 50.796 MB/sec 20.446 MB/sec 48.073 MB/sec 8.914 MB/sec
128 KBytes 52.409 MB/sec 22.214 MB/sec 51.373 MB/sec 15.947 MB/sec
256 KBytes 55.402 MB/sec 24.053 MB/sec 54.810 MB/sec 19.964 MB/sec
512 KBytes 56.388 MB/sec 23.999 MB/sec 55.947 MB/sec 21.453 MB/sec
1 MByte 57.575 MB/sec 24.458 MB/sec 57.249 MB/sec 19.771 MB/sec
As you can see the SSD is faster on reading, but slower on writing. Hence the speedup in boot time and overall responsivness of the system. Not increadable bemchmarks though.
Next up is connecting the SSD to the ATA100 connector