Corsair Performance Pro SATA 3 256GB SSD Review – Marvell Controller With a Punch

TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

This is The SSD Review Test Bench Number Two. A quick click on the photo will give you a better look.

In testing, our main objective is to obtain results as pure and as accurate as possible and we want to ensure that no anomalies slip through. Simply put, we want to provide you with the absolute best results the tested hardware can provide.

Repetition in testing is standard and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 safe mode to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.

In order to validate and confirm our findings, testing is supported by industry accepted benchmark programs. All results are displayed through capture of the actual benchmark for better understanding of the testing process by the reader.

We would like to thank ASRock, Crucial, Corsair, OCZ, Fractal-Design, and Icy Dock for sponsoring components of our Test Bench.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

Software used for testing by The SSD Review consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities, along with FutureMark PCMark Vantage.

All do a great job of showing us the numbers that we want to see, or dont want to see in some cases, while PCMark Vantage x64 is an excellent program which recreates tests that mimic the average users activity, all the while providing a medium to measure each.

Benchmark software used by The SSD Review is can be obtained by clicking on the title of each application as all may be downloaded without cost to the consumer.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER 3.9.3

Crystal Disk Info provides some excellent information about the SSD itself to include its health, product information, power on information as well as the characteristics of the SSD. We can see that the SSD is capable of TRIM as it is not greyed out as with APM.

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.

The results shown in ATTO confirm that as listed in Corsairs specs however, the buck stops here.  Enthusiasts have been looking for an SSD that pulls up performance when testing incompressible data and the Performance Pro does just that.  Tak a look at the incompressible data scores on the next page…