These
two drives lock and load an older SandForce controller
SandForce has spent years supplying
controllers to prominent SSD manufacturers, with its SF-2281 chip leading the
way, but it’s more recently come under pressure from firms such as Samsung,
Toshiba and OCZ, who have either developed their own controllers or switched
allegiances.
Intel’s 530 Series relies on the
SF-2281 controller, although Intel has optimised its firmware to eke out a
little more performance from SandForce’s venerable silicon. The 530 also sees
Intel move from 25nm to 20nm MLC NAND. These new Micron-made flash chips are
more efficient than their predecessors, bringing this drive into line with the
NAND used by most of its rivals.
Intel 150 series 240GB $155.73 inc VAT
It’s a good-looking 7mm drive,
finished with brushed metal, and with a shiny Intel logo and a neat chip
graphic in one corner. Plus, Intel is generous with its box contents; there’s a
9.5mm spacer, a 3.5in adaptor, a SATA cable and a Molex-to-SATA power adaptor.
The five-year warranty is good too, matching the best of the other drives on
test.
Inside Intel 150
Transcend’s drive makes use of the
SandForce SF-2281 controller too, and it has a slimmer 7mm form factor, so it
will fit inside tiny ultrabooks as well as desktop PCs. Meanwhile, the
three-year warranty is a standard offering that isn’t as generous as the
fiveyear deal provided by several of this month’s drives. It also has the
honour of being the cheapest SSD in this month’s Labs, at $166.28 – the next
cheapest SSD, from Crucial, is $9.98 more expensive.
Transcend SSD 340 $1,166.28 inc VAT
However, while Intel might have
tweaked its controller and used new 20nm NAND chips, neither of these
modifications helped the 530 perform well in our benchmarks. In AS SSD, the 530
was always in the bottom half of the results tables, and in four of the six
tests, it was in the bottom five –in the sequential write benchmark, that meant
a result of 322MB/sec, which is a long way behind the Samsung 840 Evo 250GB’s
503MB/sec. Likewise, in AS SSD’s 64-queue-depth random read test, the Intel SSD
managed 210MB/sec, compared to 347.2MB/sec from the OCZ Vector 150 240GB.
The situation was similar in
CrystalDiskMark, where the only glimmer of hope came in the 4KB random read and
write tests – the 530 was towards the top in the former benchmark, and mid-table
in the latter. The Intel drive returned mixed results in real-world tests too.
Its mid-table scores in the two PCMark 7 benchmarks were bolstered by one of
the best boot times in the Labs. However, its Iometer result of 26,989 was in
the bottom half of the results table, showing that you can get better drives
for more intensive storage workloads.
Transcend’s drive, reliant on the same
controller, fared no better. It was in the bottom half of the results tables in
every AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark test, and its AS SSD sequential write pace of
259.9MB/sec was the worst on test – almost half the speed of the top drive. The
Transcend’s performance was underlined in real-world tests. It propped up both
PCMark 7 tables, had an average boot time and sat towards the bottom of the
Iometer rankings too.
Conclusion
Both these drives struggle to compete
in terms of speed, and the Intel 530 is also hamstrung by one of the most
expensive pound-per-gigabyte figures on test. And, while Transcend’s drive
offers superb value at 42p per gigabyte, that doesn’t justify its benchmark
results – it’s just too slow compared to good-value competition. The Samsung
840 Pro 256GB is a better mid-sized drive than both these products in terms of
speed and bang per buck, while the Crucial M500 240GB is a better drive if
you’re on a tight budget. SandForce’s SF-2281 controller is clearly now past
its best.
Verdict
The SandForce SF-2281 controller is
now past its best – you can get better performance and value for money.
