TheOverclocker Issue 19 | Page 28

INTEL 520 240GB SSD Hardware Award RRP: $334.99 | Website: www.intel.com Test Machine • • • • • 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