Corsair Neutron and Neutron GTX SSD Review – New Link A Media Controller Pulls No Punches

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 2.46

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

You can click on any of our photos or benchmarks to get a high definition and clearer shot.  Looking at both Neutron ATTO results, we see very high write results starting as low as the 4k level which is something we don’t often see. ATTO results of 556MB/s read and 508MB/s write for the GTX and 555MB/s read and 371MB/s write for the Neutron are as close to specifications as one can ask.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of raw (0/1 Fill/compressible) or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. We tested in both compressible and incompressible samples and the results were vitrually identical.  For our purposes, we will use random, or highly incompressible data samples, again with the GTX on the left and neutron on the right.

Results drop a bit in comparison to ATTO testing which is typical of Crystal Disk Mark and a quick look at the high sequential and 512k write performance of both starts to show us how quality of NAND flash memory can make a difference.  Something great to see in both is the very high 4k random write results as well as the high performance in upper queue depths.  This was totally unexpected for a new controller to the market.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.6

Up until recently, AS SSD was the only benchmark created specifically for SSD testing and it uses incompressible data.  AS SSD, for the most part, gives us the ‘worst case scenario’ in SSD transfer speeds because of its use of incompressible data and many enthusiasts like to AS SSD for their needs.

I don’t think we have seen an AS SSD high sequential write benchmark as high as 474MB/s until this test on the right.  We also don’t typically rely on the final scoring but very few SSDs we have tested to date have broken 1000 points and, in the case of both Neutron SSDs, the lightning fast access times play a key role in these final score totals..