Windows Vista Boot & Crysis Load Times

For this test we used disk imaging software to create an exact copy of the same Windows Vista Home Premium install on every hard disk drive before recording the time taken to boot from the BIOS logo screen and a working Vista desktop, using the Windows Vista Welcome Centre as the chequered flag.

Other than the Vista Welcome Centre, all other start-up processes were disabled prior to the imaging process. The boot time was recorded using a standard handheld stopwatch, with the test repeated five times and an average taken from the middle three results to produce the figures below.



As with the G.Skill Titan, the OCZ Apex 120GB's improvements in theoretical and file write/copy/read tests don't really translate as well into real world tests like booting Windows Vista x64 or loading Crysis. While the mechanical drives are left for dust when booting Vista and there's a good six second improvement over the fastest mechanical drive when loading Crysis, there's little to separate any of the SSDs we've tested in these real world circumstances.