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 Samsung's 750GB SSD 840 EVO, 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, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Seagate SSD 600, SanDisk Extreme II, OCZ Vector, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Samsung SSD 840, Kingston Ultra Plus, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Agility 4, Kingston SSDNow V300 and Kingston HyperX 3K.
As I mentioned earlier, the SSD 840 EVO is based on Samsung's latest MEX (S4LN045X01-8030) controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see 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 840 Evo 750GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB (RAPID Mode) |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 250GB |
According to Samsung, the 750GB SSD 840 Evo is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 520 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. The drive performed well, came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests. With RAPID mode enabled, these numbers increased by more than tenfold. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the SSD 840 Evo was able to read at 5,045 MB/s and write at a blazing 5,255 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the SSD 840 EVO's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB
Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB (RAPID Mode)
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the SSD 840 EVO had average read and write speeds of 430.2 MB/s and 414.1 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 378.9 MB/s. This time around, RAPID mode had very little effect on the drive's performance. Most likely, this is due to the way HD Tach bypasses the file system when performing its read and write tests.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the SSD 840 EVO'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 840 Evo 750GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB (RAPID Mode) |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 250GB |
When tested with ATTO, the SSD 840 EVO's read speeds topped out at about 558 MB/s and its write speeds at 535 MB/s. With RAPID mode enabled, the read and write speeds were all over the place, but for the most part, it was a considerable improvement.
