The Intel SSD 540s (480GB) Review

Sequential Read Performance

The sequential read test requests 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.

Sequential read performance of SATA drives continues to be pretty boring. The Intel 540s scores better than any other planar TLC drive, but the spread of scores is still quite small.

Power consumption shows much more variability than performance for sequential reads, and the 540s is a little less efficient than the SM2256 drives here.

Intel 540s 480GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 500GBCrucial MX300 750GBOCZ Trion 100 480GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Ultra II 240GBSanDisk X400 1TBToshiba Q300 480GB

For most drives, their ranking is determined by their QD1 performance as at higher queue depths almost all drives are saturating the SATA link. The Intel 540s has very good QD1 performance, but doesn't make it all the way to peak performance until the queue is at the full depth of 32.

Sequential Write Performance

The sequential write test writes 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.

The Intel 540s manages to significantly improve on the greatest weakness of the SM2256 drives, but the sequential write speed it delivers is still much worse than any of the other competition.

The power usage of the Intel 540s is higher than the SP550 by enough that efficiency actually regressed a tiny bit, but they're both quite inefficient given how much slower they are than the competition.

Intel 540s 480GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 500GBCrucial MX300 750GBOCZ Trion 100 480GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Ultra II 240GBSanDisk X400 1TBToshiba Q300 480GB

The Intel 540s shows essentially no dependence between sequential write speed and queue depth, which is not uncommon.