The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the 830 Series, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 4.61 and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Plextor PX-256M3S, Patriot Pyro SE, Plextor PX-256M2P, Kingston HyperX, OCZ Vertex 3 and OCZ Agility 3.
Like the PX-256M2P, the PX-256M3S is based on Marvel's 88SS9174 controller chip. While not as popular as some of the newer SandForce controllers, the 88SS9174 does have one major advantage in that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Samsung SSD 830 128GB |
 Plextor PX-256M3S |
According to Samsung, the 128GB version of the SSD 830 is capable of reading at 520MB/s and writing at 320MB/s. While the drive performed well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the SSD 830's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the SSD 830 had average read and write speeds of 392.3 MB/s and 270.7 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 363.9 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the SSD 830's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Samsung SSD 830 128GB |
 Plextor PX-256M3S |
When tested with ATTO, the SSD 830's read speeds topped out at 547 MB/s and its write speeds at nearly 322 MB/s.
