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 512GB SSD 840 Pro, 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 Samsung SSD 840 Pro (256GB), Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Agility 4, SanDisk Ultra Plus, Kingston SSDNow V300, Kingston HyperX 3K and SanDisk Extreme.
As I mentioned earlier, the SSD 840 Pro is based on Samsung's latest MDX (S4LN021X01-8030) 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 Pro 512GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB |
According to Samsung, the 512GB SSD 840 Pro 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, but like the 256GB version, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The 512GB SSD 840 Pro performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 512.8 MB/s and write at 493.1 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the SSD 840 Pro'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 512GB SSD 840 Pro had average read and write speeds of 440.9 MB/s and 403.0 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 308.6 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the SSD 840 Pro'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 Pro 512GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB |
When tested with ATTO, the 512GB SSD 840 Pro's read speeds topped out at about 560 MB/s and its write speeds at 529 MB/s.
