Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD Review
Conclusion
Published: 14th September 2012 | Source: Corsair | Price: £198.23 |
Conclusion
So was the decision to step away from the more popular controllers on the market and introduce a new one with the Link_A_Media Devices LM87800 a wise one? Undoubtedly we have to give an answer of both yes and no. Which might seem odd, but let us explain.
This is the first drive we've seen with this controller, and anyone who was around when the first SandForce controllers hit the market will know that it wasn't exactly an unqualified success. The LM87800 has a few rough edges, but when it all comes together it is stunningly fast.
Two tests definitely stand out as the ones which hint at the potential available from this new drive. Firstly the AIDA64 read test suite gave us an incredible 580MB/s random read, and an even more impressive 540MB/s linear read. The other big jaw-dropping result, and easily one of the biggest leap forwards we've ever seen, is the Crystal Disk Mark sequential write test. Our previous single drive record being a decent 310MB/s, it's stunning to see the Neutron GTX pushing up close to 500MB/s. A massive improvement.
Of course there are other tests where the drive doesn't appear to be as impressive. Small block sizes in particular (4K) are generally a bit slower than we'd like to see, or indeed we've seen before. The much vaunted IOPS multi-tasking definitely shows up in some scenarios, but not all benchmarks take full advantage of it. In the real world of course you're far more likely to saturate the available bandwidth as even a gentle bit of multi-tasking, for example iTunes, Firefox and a photo-editing package of your choice, will really allow the drive to shine.
We never like to comment much on potential future performance here at OC3D. We like to review something in the same manner that you would see it yourself. However it would be remiss of us to not point out that this is the first iteration of this controller, and we're sure that as the technology matures the few little issues will be ironed out.
At well under the £/GB threshold (this drive is £199 for the 240GB GTX variant) and with some phenomenal write speeds alongside the ability to keep running hard regardless of the type of data you're transferring thanks to the LM87800 not relying upon compression to attain its high performance, we have to award it our OC3D Gold Award.
Thanks to Corsair for supplying the Neutron GTX for review. Discuss in the OC3D forums.
Most Recent Comments
Personaly I still think ssd's are to expensive for the size, I'd like to see 250g below £100 b4 I'd consider buying 1
Any thoughts, Tom?
(Also, I can't thank you enough for all the review vids - they've been extremely helpful while I've been gathering parts for my first PC build.)
But I've a doubt in my mind over the reliability of new LM87800 controller.
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Originally Posted by Greenback
just out of curiosity in your review you say you don't care about ocz is there any particular reason why?
Personaly I still think ssd's are to expensive for the size, I'd like to see 250g below £100 b4 I'd consider buying 1 |
The new vertex 4 with indilinx controler might be a diferent story, but about previous versions I wont recomend anyone to get them. I really regret have bought mine since I had some issues(and still do sometimes) of sistem frozing, etc. I had to turn OS HDD plug and play to be able to be stable.
Next time I get an SSD is gona be corsair or Intel for sure.
SATA 6? AHCI or IDE?
Could just be a faulty unit I support - or maybe even a dodgey sata cable?
Id put money on the fact you are using a 2011 board.
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Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
^^^Be config problem, IE: user/driver related issues.
Id put money on the fact you are using a 2011 board. |
I have used a new SATA cable, different SATA port and even try a secure clean as advised by corsair posts.
Maybe the SATA controller on older motherboards dont play game with these new drives.
But yeh, your motherboard will be why.
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Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
Be the drivers no doubt.
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I have just added the as a boot drive and have just installed windows 7 onto it. Obviously a clean install. I am experiencing crashing and freezing.
I am coming from the Force 3 120gb so I know how a SSD behaves with windows and this is the first time I have ever seen the spinning loading symbol on the taskbar during startup.
What should I do?
EDIT: I just updated the bios on the mobo and it improved drastically but it still lags, horribly, Programs like chrome which work smoothly on any system just keep freezing.
EDIT2: I should mention that its lags for a bit, then it works, then lags, then works. It just goes in a cycle. However, this is not okay for any SSD, this is supposed to be one of the best.
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Originally Posted by CPMFW
i´d love to swap my force gt for a neutron gtx
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The first SSD equipped with the LM87800 controller appears in our offices. How does it perform?
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