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 Samsung SSD 840, 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 Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, OCZ Agility 4, SanDisk Ultra Plus, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Kingston SDNow V300, Silicon Power S70, OCZ Vertex 4, Kingston HyperX 3K, and SanDisk Extreme.
As I mentioned earlier, the SSD 840 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 250GB |
 SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD 256GB |
According to Samsung, the 250GB SSD 840 is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 250 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed better than expected when writing, it came up a bit short in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read speed test.
 Samsung SSD 840 250GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The SSD 840 performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 508.6 MB/s and write at 260.2 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the SSD 840'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 840 had average read and write speeds of 435.9 MB/s and 257.6 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 462.5 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the SSD 840'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 250GB |
 SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD 256GB |
When tested with ATTO, the SSD 840's read speeds topped out at about 561 MB/s and its write speeds at 263 MB/s.
