Intel 335 Series SSD Review – Low Price and Performance Through 20nm MLC Memory

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.

Intel specifications list 500MB/s read and 450MB/s write performance while our ATTO results brings us 552MB/s read and 527MB/s write; this is what we meant by LSI SandForce performance.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of highly compressible data (oFill/1Fill), or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. In the Intel 335, we have displayed testing using highly compressible data on the left, compared to that of incompressible on the right.

Crystal DiskMark results always tend to be a bit lower than ATTO and it is definitely good news seeing such high 4K random write performance, although we have to admit we pulled a couple extra attempts at trying for the 100MB/s mark for those low 4K write speeds.

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. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

Our AS SSD benchmarks are typical of what we see in most ‘LSI SandForce Driven’ drives today and that is encouraging as the main concerns with new memory being introduced to market are the give and takes. If asked my personal preference as to which specific characteristic of AS SSD I look at closest these days, it is definitely the AS SSD Copy Benchmark below.

Not only does it provide a testing scenario that is pretty much as close to reality as one can get, but also, it’s performance is simply based on the maximum speed reached and time it takes to transfer three files from one part of the SSD to another.  Only within the last few months are we seeing newer SSDs reaching consistently high SATA 3 speeds and lightning fast copy speeds.  This is an excellent example.