INTEL 520 240GB SSD
Hardware Award
RRP: $334.99 | Website: www.intel.com
Test Machine
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Intel Core i7 3770K
GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H
SEAGATE 7200.12 500GB
ANTEC HCP 1200
Windows 7 64-bit SPI
I
ntel’s 510 120GB SSD we
reviewed several issues
ago left us fairly impressed.
Sure it enough it didn’t
set any speed records or
anything of the sort, but
given when it was released,
its performance and the
asking price. We couldn’t
judge the drive harshly at
all as it offered better than
average performance and
in fact could have been
considered a performance
drive.
With the 520 drive, we are
not only looking at a drive
with twice the capacity but
one that only costs $55 more
than the 510 drive retailed
for when it was new. Not
28 The OverClocker Issue 19 | 2012
only does this speak well
for SSD prices as a whole, it
also means that upgrading
from the 510 to the 520 isn’t
as expensive as one might
imagine provided you can get
a reasonable price for your
current drive.
As the successor of
Intel’s highly successful
SSD, the 520 has some
significant changes which
help deliver the performance
improvements we recorded.
Gone is the Marvell
88SS9174 controller and
in its place is the familiar
SandForce SF-2281. The
paring of this controller
and Intel’s firmware isn’t
as generic as some other
vendors. Intel, having put
this controller through some
very stringent tests to say
the least. The 520 drive
offers performance that is in
some cases atypical of SF2281 powered drives. Along
with Intel’s own 25nm NAND
memory, the combination
produces some surprisingly
good results.
Compared to the original
510, this iteration is vastly
superior. There isn’t much
difference in the sequential
read performance on our
platform, but we did find
huge differences in the
sequential write results. In
fact our results placed the
520 drive ahead of the OCZ
Vertex 3 Max IOPS drive. This
was carried through in our IO
Meter results as well where
it performed admirably
thoroughly beating out the
510 drive. Of particular
interest to us was the Max
IO response time result,
which pegged the drive at
least ten times faster than
its predecessor. Staggering
results indeed and once
again ones that we are all
sure to appreciate in our day
to day usage of the drive.
Oddly enough when it