Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0

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Apoptosis
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Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0

Post by Apoptosis »

Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0

Intel really kicked the SSD world in high gear when they released their X-25 series of drives last year. Their performance was the benchmark that all other drives were measured against for quite some time. Many have wondered what Intel would bring to the table in 2011. The time is finally here and Intel sent us over a pair of their new 510 Series 250GB drives to have a look at their performance. Take a look to see how they matched up with the new SandForce drives.

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So how did Intel do this round? Very good actually. Having used a few of the Marvell controlled drives before, we had an idea of what to expect although we knew that Intel was bringing their own firmware. Obviously, they brought their 'A' game when they designed the firmware because their 510 Series performed better than any Marvell drive we have tested. If this is just a mid-level product until their own high-end controller is ready for action, we can't wait to see what that's going to give us in terms of performance...
Article Title: Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1563/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $623.99 shipped
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Re: Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0

Post by Major_A »

You didn't have the Write Back Cache enabled in RST did you? I just re-installed my RAID setup and I was playing with that setting. According to RST enabling it boosts performance. In my 2 or 3 benchmarks I ran all it did was hurt performance, particularly the write performance.
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Re: Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0

Post by Apoptosis »

Not sure what Intel RST Drivers were used and how... Might be something to ask Joe to add to the setup page.
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Re: Intel 510 Series 250GB SSDs Reviewed in RAID 0

Post by Major_A »

He has a picture of the RST app opened up and expanded on page 3 of the review. In the screenshot it appears that the Write-Back Cache is disabled. I was just checking. For all I know this setting is targeted at SSD drives and that's why I noticed a performance drop with traditional platter drives.

EDIT
Added a screenshot of the RST GUI with the Write-Back Cache description.
Click to enlarge.
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