Testbed Configuration
For our SSD testing session, we use a
unified examination system which is built on an Intel H77 base mainboard,
featuring two SATA 6 Gbit/s ports. We will use these ports to connect the
tested SSDs.
About testing participants, it is obvious
that Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB and Samsung 840 250 GB SSDs must be compared
against the most current offering from other vendors. Therefore, you will see
on the diagram the performance numbers of other products based on the
SandForce, Marvell, LAMD and Indilinx controllers, as well as the
representatives of Samsung’s previous SSD generation. The LSI SF-2281 is
represented by the fastest products on its platform - Intel SSD 520, as well as
a typical solid state drive - Corsair Force GS. LAMD LM87800 controller will be
tested in Corsair SSD Neutron and Corsair Neutron GTX. OCZ Vertex 4 and the OCZ
Vector defended the honor of the Indilinx Everest 2 and Indilinx Barefoot 3
controllers. Marvel platform was brought in by Plextor M5S on Marvell 9174
controller, and Plextor M5 Pro based on a more up-to-date Marvell 9187
controller. And of course, we can not ignore the previous generation Samsung
SSD 830 on the MCX controller. All above mentioned SSDs use exclusively
synchronous MLC flash memory. Corsair neutron, Intel SSD 520, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ
Vector and Plextor M5S are built with 25 nm memory from IMFT with ONFI
interface. Corsair Force GS, Corsair Neutron GTX Plextor M5 Pro and use Toggle
Mode MLC NAND manufactured by Toshiba, the manufacturing process uses 2x nm or
19 nm. As for Samsung SSD, I want to remind you that they use their own memory:
it used to be 27 nm Toggle Mode MLC NAND, but now the new drives are designed
with 21 nm MLC and TLC NAND with Toggle Mode MLC 2.0 interface. We did our best
to ensure that all testing participants reached the highest storage capacity,
to ensure the fairness of the comparison.
Our overall testbed was configured as
follows:
·
Intel Core i5-3470S (Ivy Bridge, 4 cores, 2.9
GHz, EIST and Turbo Boost turned off);
·
Intel DH77DF mainboard (BIOS 0108);
·
2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333 SDRAM DIMM 9-9-9-24-1T;
·
Crucial m4 256 GB system disk
(CT256M4SSD2);
·
Tested SSDs:
·
Corsair Force GS Series 240 GB
(CSSD-F240GBGS-BK, firmware version 5.03);
·
Corsair Neutron GTX 240 GB (CSSD-N240GBGTX-BK,
firmware version 2.06);
·
Corsair Neutron 240 GB (CSSD-N240GB3-BK,
firmware version 2.06);
·
Intel SSD 520 240 GB (SSDSC2CW240A3K5, firmware
version 400i);
·
OCZ Vertex 4 256 GB (VTX4-25SAT3-256G, firmware
version 1.5);
·
OCZ Vector 256 GB (VTR1-25SAT3-256G, firmware
version 2.0);
·
Plextor M5S 256 GB (PX-256M5S, firmware version
1.03);
·
Plextor M5 Pro 256 GB (PX-256M5P, firmware
version 1.03);
·
Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (MZ-7PD256, firmware
version DXM04B0Q);
·
Samsung 840 250 GB (MZ-7TD250, firmware
version DXT07B0Q);
·
Samsung 830 256 GB (MZ-7PC256D, firmware
version CXM03B1Q).
·
Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate x64
·
Drivers:
·
Intel Chipset Driver 9.3.0.1026;
·
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver
9.17.10.2932;
·
Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.7.0.1013
Performance
Random and Sequential Read/Write
We use Anvil's Storage Utilities 1.0.51 to
measure random and sequential ref and write speeds. The synthetic benchmarks
integrated into this software suite provides an excellent overview of the
products by experimentally checking out a wide variety of speed characteristics
of the tested SSD.
The results you see here refers to FOB (fresh
out-of-box) non-degraded SSD performance. Moreover, we use incompressible data,
which is officially the most favorable scenario for the LSI SF-2281controller
that employs on-the-fly data compression. However, our tests show that in
today's world when the data may only be partially compressed and the utilized
flash memory has high-speed synchronous interface, the compression algorithm
doesn't have a great impact on the real-life performance of SSDs with SandForce
controllers. So we abandoned the idea of testing SandForce-based SSDs with
compressible data: these results would be exclusively artificial in nature and
wouldn’t have any practical value for us today.
Sequential
read procedure
Random
Read 4K
Random
Read 4K QD=4
Random
Read 4K QD=16
Random
Read 32K
Random
Read 128K
Sequential
write procedure
Random
Write 4K
Random
Write 4K QD=4
Random
Write 4K QD=16
As promised by Samsung, the new 840 Pro
claimed to be the fastest current desktop SSD. We can see that our synthetic
benchmarks. Its read speed is unrivalled at most popular types of operations,
being only inferior to the read speed of the Plextor M5 Pro when the request
queue is very long. The Samsung 840 Pro achieved good results in the writing,
but its results is pretty average when it comes to random-address writing with
a small request queue.
The Samsung 840 is essentially slower than
its senior cousin. It is good at sequential reading and at reading large data
blocks, but the high latency of TLC NAND flash reduces its speed at writing and
at processing 4KB data blocks. That said, the Samsung 840 offers good
performance with its low price. It is no worse than its predecessor, the
Samsung 830, and is able to compete with popular products like OCZ Vertex 4,
Plextor M5S and Corsair neutron. Samsung engineers seem to have made up for the
high latency of TLC NAND flash in some way or another, so this SSD doesn’t look
like an outsider among products with MLC NAND flash.
