Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB) - Take a Trip Down Cherryville

Reliability is Key

Intel’s solid state drives (SSDs) have been highly sought after by enthusiasts for its performance and reliability established since the days of the legendary Intel X25-M. The recently launched Intel SSD 520 Series (codenamed Cherryville) is the latest from the computing giant and it is finally here. It’s a few months late to the high-end consumer SSD game (as witnesses from our Tech Awards 2012 roundup) but that’s mainly because of Intel’s strenuous and stringent year-long validation process.

Although the ingredients behind Intel’s latest 'dish' are somewhat familiar, Intel has thrown in a few special elements to stay ahead of the pack.

Firstly, Intel’s latest SSD has made the switch to a SandForce SF-2281 controller (a change from the Marvell controller used on the SSD 510 series). This is the same controller that is also used by many other high-end consumer-grade SSDs, such as Kingston’s HyperX SSD, Corsair’s Force GT and OCZ’s Vertex 3, just to name a few. However, it stays ahead of the game by employing a special firmware exclusive to Intel SSDs. With this special firmware, Intel says users of its SSD 520 series drives can expect to have fewer reliability issues (crashes, BSODs) than other SSDs that employ the same SF-2281 controller.

Apart from the SandForce controller, the new Intel SSD 520 series also uses the latest 25nm NAND flash memory. However, it distinguishes itself thanks to its joint venture with Micron Technology, IMFT - the company that manufactures the NAND memory used in Intel SSDs. Thanks to this unique relationship, Intel is able to have the first pick of the absolute best quality memory from IMFT.

Clearly, apart from outright performance, Intel is hoping to stand out from the pack by banking on reliability - thanks to its exclusive firmware and access to top quality memory chips. This is an important point because SSDs which employed the SF-2281 controller were plagued by a BSOD bug that has since been rectified with a firmware update. However, there are still some users who continue to experience BSODs and stuttering performance.

Anandtech, for example, reported that while the firmware update has fixed most of the non-Intel SSDs, there will still drives which suffered random occurrences of BSODs, such as in this case here, where their system would crash while running Battlefield 3. The exact same system ran Battlefield 3 fine when they switched over to an Intel SSD 520 series drive. However, the good thing is the problem isn't widespread as we didn't encounter this on our test bed and neither did we chance upon our community voicing out the problem.

In any case, it's good to know that Intel is putting special focus to tackle the drive's compatibility and performance matters with their own customized firmware. As enthusiasts would have come to know by now, firmwares may be small, but they are essential to a drive's capabilities and longevity in the market. We detail more of the Intel SSD 520 series on the following page before we share performance results.

The Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)

Unlike the previous SSD 510 series which came in just two capacities - 120GB and 250GB - Intel is offering new SSD 520 series in more capacities to cater to different users with different needs and budget - 60GB, 120GB, 180GB, 240GB and 480GB.

The drive we have with us for review is the the 240GB version - perfect for our comparison testing. This should also prove the most popular model seeing that it offers the best blend of performance, price and usability for the enthusiasts.

The drive comes in the familiar form of a 7mm height chassis but with a 2.5mm removable plastic adapter that’ll let you fit in 9.5mm drive bays (the standard for 2.5-inch bays). This gives it the flexibility to be installed in Ultrabooks, mainstream notebooks and desktops. Note, however, that Intel doesn’t provide shorter screws should you choose to remove the plastic adapter.

That aside, Intel does give you a bracket for installing the drive in a 3.5-inch drive bay and also provided both data and power SATA cables, which is pretty standard fare.

Test Setup

The drives tested on our new storage testbed, has the following system specifications:

• Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
• MSI Z68A-GD80 (Intel Z68 chipset)
• 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM
• MSI GeForce 8600GTS
• Windows 7

The list of SSDs tested are as follows:

• Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
• Intel SSD 510 Series (240GB)
• Crucial M4 SSD (240GB)
• Kingston HyperX SSD (240GB)
• OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB)
• Patriot Pyro SE (240GB)
• Crucial C300 (64GB)
• Intel X25-M Gen.2 (160GB)

The new Intel SSD 520 series will be pitted against the current crop of high-end consumer SSDs. The interesting match ups here will be seeing how the new Intel drive performs against the older SSD 510 series and also both the Kingston and OCZ drives, both of which also use the same SF-2281 controller from SandForce.

We have also included older drives such as the Crucial C300 and even the Intel X25-M, one of the fastest drives in their heyday, to see just how much Intel’s latest has improved upon drives from the past.

The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

• AS-SSD benchmark 1.6.4
• HD Tune Pro 4.6
• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
• PCMark 7
• PCMark Vantage
• Iometer (version 2006.07.27)

AS SSD

ASSSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first. This is good to test drives like the Intel SSD 520, Kingston HyperX, OCZ Vertex 3 and other such drives against SSDs that don't use the SF-2281 controller to gain an upper hand.

When it came to sequential read and write tests, as well as read and write of small data of 4K file size, there was very little to separate the new Intel SSD 520 series from the current crop of SSDs. The new Intel SSD posted very good results and its performance in this aspect is generally solid. This was true for the copy test as well, which is a simple test which measures just how fast the drive could copy a variety of files and folders.

However, coming to the most important test of 4K read/writes speeds with 64 threads, which best simulates everyday practical use with a lot of data being queued, the Intel SSD 520 series pulled ahead quite clearly - posting a 4% and 8% lead over the second fastest drives in both read and write operations. On this test, it was also more than twice as fast as the previous generation Intel SSD 510 series. The new drive couldn't have come at a better time as the SSD 510 series was looking long in the tooth even a few months back.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1

Much like HD Tune, CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data.

Performance of the Intel SSD 520 series on this benchmark is generally strong and is right up there with the current crop of high-end consumer SSDs, if not better in the more strenuous tests.

HD Tune Pro 4.6

HD Tune is a popular benchmarking tool for measuring the performance of storage drives. The performance of the Intel SSD 520 series here was generally good and on par with the fastest drives in the market currently. Compared to the older SSD 510 series, the new drive from Intel was markedly faster and had noticeably better performance in write performance and also in instances where they had to do random operations.

PCMark 7

PcMark 7 is the latest benchmarking suite from FutureMark that evaluates the performance of Windows 7 machines. It tests a wide range workloads and aspects of the system ranging from computation, image and video manipulation and storage. We’ll be looking solely at the storage test here.

On PCMark 7, the Intel SSD 520 series scored a respectable 5483 PCMarks, which places it right at the top along with the Patriot and Kingston SSDs. It also did noticeably better than the older SSD 510 series drive.

PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage might have been around for quite some time, but it is still a fairly accurate representation of how the drives might be used in real-world scenarios. We are focusing on the hard drive test suite which comprises of tasks such as loading of applications to media creation.

Here, the new Intel SSD 520 series easily racked up the highest score, recording 72609 PCMarks, a whopping 21846 more than the second-placed Kingston HyperX SSD. It also easily outclassed the older Intel SSD 510 series by scoring more than 70% better. The Crucial M4 drive wasn't playing well with some of the tests and failed to run in some instances.

Overall, the Intel drive’s outstanding performance is due to its solid read and write performance and it does well on almost every category, and has no real weakness on this test suite. It easily outclasses its competitors and is leaps and bounds ahead of the older SSD 510 series.

Iometer Results (Part 1)

Lastly, we put the drives through the rigorous grind of Iometer, with different workloads and I/O queue depths. We have chosen to show results from a queue depth of 1 to 5 as this better represents the workloads a typical consumer might face.



The Intel SSD 520 series’ IOPS performance is surprisingly lackluster considering its earlier performance. Compared to the current crop of SSDs and even the older Intel SSD 510 series, it is clearly lagging behind in the 64k streaming reads and writes. File and web server performance was more encouraging, though not class-leading. In fact, the old X25-M from Intel actually fared better at the web server workload. Just for kicks, we've included the WD VelociRaptor's performance scores too.

Results - Iometer (Part 2)

Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Response times of the new Intel SSD 520 series are generally speedy and comparable to the current crop of high-end SSDs. Take note that lower figures are better in this series of graphs.

Come On Down to Cherryville

Looking at the results of our rigorous testing, it is clear that the new Intel SSD 520 series delivers on the performance front.

Performance on PCMark Vantage was exceptional and the new Intel drive was always amongst the fastest on the other tests as well, clearly matching the speed of the current crop of high-end SSDs. The new SSD 520 series also easily outclassed the older SSD 510 series in a number of benchmarks. However, IOPS performance on Iometer was a little lackluster, but it did post solid response times on the same benchmark.

Overall, performance is exemplary and clearly one of the best in its class. And moving on to Intel’s claim of better reliability than competing SSDs, based on our time stress-testing the drive and without using the drive extensively on a day to day basis, what we can say is that it ran smoothly and without any hiccups.

Intel SSDs have always commanded a premium and the new SSD 520 series is no different. Locally, expect prices for the 240GB drive to be at about S$570, but it can go for under S$530 if you know where to shop . This is more costly than competing brands such as Corsair, Crucial and OCZ, but not by much to be completely honest - around S$20 - S$30 range. Considering its performance and Intel’s extensive validation period to ensure total reliability, we think this premium is well justified. Those on a tighter budget but won't settle for anything less than the Intel 520 series for your next SSD, you could opt for other capacity price points.

But how does it rate against Kingston’s HyperX that won our last shootout? To begin, for the same 240GB capacity, you’ll need to fork out a S$100 more. And while the Kingston drive is fast, we found that the Intel’s latest is more than capable of taking it on. What the Kingston has going for it though is its nice design and excellent after sales service and support. But is that worth a S$100 more? Probably not for some folks, but we'll leave it up to you to decide.

All things considered, Intel’s latest SSD 520 series is yet another winner from the company. The switch to a SandForce controller yielded significant gains in performance over the older SSD 510 series and its Marvell controller. This, coupled with Intel’s reputation for building reliable drives, and the fact that they managed to deliver the new drive at price point, which, although slightly higher than its competitors, is still palatable enough for most enthusiasts to stomach, makes the new Intel SSD 520 series high in our recommendation list.

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