SSD isn't some magical word or feature - case in point, linode's non-ssd offering beats the pants off DO's ssd
Here's a 512MB DO writing a large file:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/out bs=1M count=4k; rm -f /tmp/out
4096+0 records in
4096+0 records out
4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 16.1503 s, 266 MB/s
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/output bs=1M count=4k; rm -f /tmp/output
4096+0 records in
4096+0 records out
4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 36.4609 seconds, 118 MB/s