Samsung 840 EVO SSD: Tested At 120, 250, 500, And 1000 GB

Test Setup And Benchmarks

Our consumer storage test bench is based on Intel's Z77 Platform Controller Hub paired with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU. Intel's 6- and 7-series chipsets are virtually identical from a storage perspective. We're standardizing on older RST 10.6.1002 drivers for the foreseeable future.

Changes in RST's driver packages occasionally result in subtle performance changes. They can also lead to some truly profound variance in scores and results as well, depending on the driver revision. Some versions flush writes more or less frequently. Others work better in RAID environments. In fact, builds 11.2 and newer even support the TRIM command in RAID. Regardless, results obtained with one revision may or may not be comparable to results obtained with another, so sticking with one build across all tests is mandatory.