Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver Software

Hello!

I have an ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard, a single Samsung 830 256GB SSD for a system drive, and a 3TB HDD for storage. I'm running Windows 7 64 Bit. I am not using a RAID or anything.

My motherboard came with a support DVD that contains a driver called "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver Software".

Should I keep this installed on my system? Is it good? Is it just bloat? Or is it just for RAID?

I read through the meager help file that it installed, and did some googling. I've read some folks say that it helps performance even without a RAID, some folks that say I only need it if I'm using a RAID, some folks that say its actually bad and can cause system problems (slow startup, hangs, etc.).

I ran CrystalDiskMark x64 to test my SSD and with the Intel RST installed I got:
SEQ Read 516.9 MB/s
SEQ Write 409.4 MB/s
512K Read 357.0 MB/s
512K Write 399.3 MB/s
4K Read 25.99 MB/s
4K Write 113.5 MB/s
4K QD32 Read 309.6 MB/s
4K QD32 Write 151.4 MB/s

If I then uninstalled the Intel RST I got:
SEQ Read 515.1 MB/s
SEQ Write 408.4 MB/s
512K Read 357.6 MB/s
512K Write 372.3 MB/s
4K Read 24.75 MB/s
4K Write 96.26 MB/s
4K QD32 265.0 MB/s
4K QD32 152.7 MB/s

I'm not even sure how accurate or helpful those benchmarks are. However it appears that it does perform better with the RST installed....but on the other hand...maybe the performance increase is overshadowed by the extra "stuff" that loads at startup and I'm still better off keeping it uninstalled. I'm not even sure I'm using correctly and maybe its just for a RAID.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!