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Review: Corsair Neutron Series and Neutron Series GTX

by Parm Mann on 22 August 2012, 18:52 4.0

Tags: Corsair

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabk6v

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Test Methodology

Test Bench

CPU Intel Core i7-3770K (3.5GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Memory 8GB G.Skill TridentX (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 2,400MHz
Storage Controllers Intel Z77 PCH (SATA 6Gbps, AHCI)
Graphics Card Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC 2GB
Power Supply Corsair AX750
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium (SP1, 64-bit)

Comparison Drive Configurations

  Total Capacity Controller Firmware Interface
ADATA S511 60GB SandForce SF-2281 319ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 002 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SandForce SF-2281 1.2 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SandForce SF-2281 1.2 SATA 6Gbps
Intel 510 Series 120GB Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 PPG2 SATA 6Gbps
Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB SandForce SF-2281 332ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
Patriot Pyro 120GB SandForce SF-2281 319ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
Patriot Pyro SE 120GB SandForce SF-2281 332ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
Patriot Wildfire 120GB SandForce SF-2281 319ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
SanDisk Extreme 120GB SandForce SF-2281 R112 SATA 6Gbps
Crucial m4 128GB Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 0309 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Octane 128GB Indilinx IDX300M00-BC E0882584 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Force Series GS 240GB SandForce SF-2281 5.02 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Neutron Series 240GB Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 M206 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Neutron Series GTX 240GB Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 M206 SATA 6Gbps
Intel 520 Series 240GB SandForce SF-2281 400i SATA 6Gbps
Kingston HyperX 240GB SandForce SF-2281 320ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SandForce SF-2281 501ABBF0 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SandForce SF-2281 1.11 SATA 6Gbps
SanDisk Extreme 240GB SandForce SF-2281 R201 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 1.0 SATA 6Gbps
Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 0006 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB Indilinx IDX400M00-BC 05.10.31 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 3 480GB SandForce SF-2281 2.15 SATA 6Gbps
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB Indilinx IDX400M00-BC 05.10.31 SATA 6Gbps
Samsung HD103SJ HDD 1TB N/A 1AJ100E4 SATA 3Gbps

Benchmarks

ATTO Disk Benchmark The freeware ATTO benchmark provides basic sequential speed results for both read and write operations. Using the default queue depth of four, we record read and write speeds during 1MB transfers.
CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark provides various storage benchmarks, but we're interested in the returned 32-thread 4K performance numbers to see how well the drives fare when tasked with numerous small transfers.
AS SSD

Another freeware benchmark, AS SSD is designed primarily for testing solid-state storage. We run the benchmark and record the drive's overall read and write scores. The final numbers take into account sequential speeds, input/output performance and access time.

Iometer Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement tool originally developed by Intel. To measure a drive's I/O performance, we set the benchmark to utilise 4KB transfers in a random spread. Read and write distribution is set to 50 per cent, and queue depth at 32. The test is run for two minutes and we record the total I/Os per second.
PCMark 7 PCMark 7's storage test is a collection of workloads that isolate the performance of the PC's storage system.