Feature Articles

Investigating Samsung's RAPID Caching Technology

By Kenny Yeo - 26 Feb 2014

Test Setup + Timing Tests

Test Setup

The drives will be tested on our recently revamped storage testbed. The main changes are the faster Core i5-2500K processor and an accompanying Z77 motherboard which has native Thunderbolt connectivity.

  • Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
  • ASUS P8Z77 Pro Thunderbolt (Intel Z77 chipset)
  • 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory
  • MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
  • Windows 7

We have also revised our benchmarks, ditching older benchmarks such as HD Tune and also including an all new timing test to better evaluate the drive’s real world performance.

The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

  • AS-SSD benchmark 1.7.4739
  • CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
  • PCMark 7 (Storage suite)
  • Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
  • Timing Tests (Cold start, Reboot, Apps Launching)

What we are concerned here primarily is the effects of RAPID mode caching technology on the drive’s performance. In Samsung’s white paper, the company claims to be able to achieve transfer speeds exceeding that of SATA’s practical bandwidth and says that speeds in excess of 1GB/s is possible. Very impressive and lofty claims, and we are interested to see if it is true. Here's the list of drives we'll be comparing in our results chart:-

  • Crucial M500
  • Samsung SSD 840 EVO
  • Samsung SSD 840 Pro
  • Plextor M5 Pro Extreme
  • OCZ Vector 150

 


Timing Tests

With RAPID mode enabled, we noticed that both boot and restart times suffered slightly, the reason for this is that the system needs to load the filter driver first as well as retrieve and reinstate the cache that was stored in the drive from your previous session - and all of this takes up some time. However, as a result of RAPID mode, application launch times did see improvements. On the Samsung SSD 840 EVO, RAPID mode enabled it to launch the entire Adobe CS6 suite a good half a second faster. This is an appreciable gain considering the small differences seen when comparing SSDs in general.

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