Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB Solid State Drive Review

Following our recent look at Corsair's new Neutron SSD, based on the LAMD LM87800 controller, we were very impressed with how the newcomer performed when marked against the equivalent SandForce driven drives and more so how it looks to shake up the SSD market. As a one up on the Neutron, the Neutron GTX is set to top the line and not only shake up the SSD market, but more like blow it wide open for a new range of LAMD based drives in the future. Over the Neutron, the Neutron GTX hosts Toshiba 24nm Toggle NAND, faster read and write speeds and also greater IOPS performance at both levels. Other features between the two drives are virtually the same, with both coming in with 120GB and 240GB capacities, a low 7mm profile gearing the drives with better compatibility for the ultra book market and the introduction of the new Link-A-Media Devices LM87800 controller at its heart. We saw when we looked at the Neutron that the LAMD controller does have what it takes to take on SandForce, however given the GTX is a step up from the standard Neutron, I'm expecting the pending results to be even more impressive and to push the limits of what is possible that little bit further. Comparing the GTX box to the Neutrons blue and black theme. Very little has changed and why not, considering their part of the same family, the only difference is the red theme instead of blue and a higher set of rated IOPS mentioned at the base. Turning the box over, we find a blurb about the Neutron GTX printed in six languages below which is a small window revealing the part number as printed on the drive. Alongside the drive, Corsair include a 2.5" to 3.5" drive bay adaptor for cases that don't natively offer 2.5" drive mountings, two sets of crews for fitting and a warranty information leaflet. One of the amazing things we noted with the Neutron is how light the drive is. Whilst this is not a key factor to most when buying a drive, when looking at the ultra book market, weight is a major factor and having a lighter drive only adds to the desirability and is in effect a major selling point in that region alongside its slim 7mm profile. On the underside things are the same as well, the only difference being the change from a single warranty sticker that appeared to hold no purpose where it was positioned. Instead we find two smaller stickers that bridge the gap between the two halves of the case. As we've noted before, the Neutron GTX is only a mere 7mm thick and with its ultra slim build allows for better compatibility in systems and more importantly the likes of ultra books, where space is at a premium and we find most drives not fitting. Opening the case up, the PCB is attached by three screws to the lower half of the shell. On the lower half we can see a small thermal contact pad, which allows the controller to dissipate any heat through to the thin metal case. Taking the PCB out of the case, when marked against the standard Neutron, this comprises of a whole new design with the vast majority of the drives major components situated on the lower half of the board. Turning the PCB over, we find the board populated with a total of eight Toggle NAND ICs and the LAMD controller at the centre. Towards the SATA terminals, we find a smaller 256MB RAM IC which when paired with the same IC on the other side of the board, gives us a total of 512MB of DDR2 memory. Looking a little closer at the flash ICs, we can see that for the GTX, Corsair have opted for eight of Toshiba's 32GB 24nm Toggle Flash NAND chips. These are the same ICs that we have previously seen in the Performance Pro Series of SSDs, however only offer a total of 240GB of storage capacity as part of provisioning for the controller. Test system: Asus Maximus V Forumla Intel Core i7 3770k Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz 16GB AMD Radeon HD 7970 Corsair H80 Corsair HX1050W Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD 3 x AOC E2795VH We would like to thank AOC, Asus, Corsair, Kingston and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components. Many different software applications are also used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible. Software used: AS SSD ATTO CrystalDiskMark Anvil's Storage Utilities PCMark 7 The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests the program measures the time it takes to read a 1GB file to write respectively. Starting with AS SSD as normal, the GTX and its LAMD controller, takes the real world read speeds right up to the max topping out at 515MB/s whilst write speeds are set at an very impressive 480MB/s. The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. Behind the scenes, we can see that the GTX again takes everything to the max with read and write speeds consistently above the 500MB/s mark at the higher block sizes.CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enable you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of "CrystalDiskMark": Sequential reads/writes Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes Text copy Change dialog design internationalization (i18n) Whilst CrystalDiskMark doesn't have the same high read and write speeds as AS SSD, the across the boards speeds are very impressive showing the LM87800 controller has got what it takes to be the best.Anvil's Storage Utilities is a new benchmarking utility that we have started using here at eTeknix, its completely free to download and has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. As well as testing the drive in a variety of benchmarking tests, it also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to give days, months and potentially even years of use in a shorter period of time to see how the drive copes in the longer term. Using Anvil's Storage Utilities, we can get an idea on the IOPS performance and both read and write IOPS at the 4K QD16 mark are very high. Alongside that the sequential 4MB speeds are close to that of what the drive claims to have. Overall we have one of the best results that we have seen so far with an SSD in this test suite. PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows for home and business use. PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 PC tests for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark test. The Lightweight test measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark test. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity tests. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware tests. One can rely on the Storage test to test SSDs and external hard drives, as well as the system drive. In the last of our tests, PCMark7 gives an indication of how the drive will perform in the real world and with a fast set of speeds, the Neutron GTX gives a little more in each scenario as expected when compared to the standard Neutron drive. When we looked at the Neutron SSD not too long ago, on the whole I was very impressed with the capability of the new LAMD controller and its potential to take on the known and well trusted SandForce SF-2281 IC. As expected with a next level model, the GTX has put the icing on the cake for the LAMD controller, showing with a higher level of performance that it is a new contender on the market and I believe that given time and a few more integrations into other drives that it will shake things up and diffuse the market with options. Onto the drive itself, the integration of Toshiba's Toggle NAND memory gives the drive along with its new controller the blazing speeds that we have seen and as are claimed rightly by Corsair. Further more, the slim 7mm profile and amazingly lightweight build make it ideal for the ultra book market and any user that wants to upgrade their SSD now has an option that not only offers compatibility, but great performance as well. Obviously, there is the question of long term reliability from the controller being new onto the market and as one will respect, this is a time will tell answer, but with the uptake by a huge name in the memory market, it would be safe to say that the research and development has been done and all these questions would have been asked by Corsair themselves. Everything considered, if I was to be in the market for a new drive, the Neutron GTX is a big winner and would definitely be in the short list for purchase. Bottom line, everything new has its risks, but the Neutron series of drives have shaken the market right up and shown that you don't have to have components from the dominant names to produce a drive with top end performance across the board. In time I'm sure we'll be seeing more of the Neutron series and the LAMD ML87800 controller.