Sandy Bridge Laptop + SSD + Two Different Drivers

So based on a thread in the Sager Forum I wanted to see what the differences were between the following two different drivers. First a little background. This test was conducted on a new Toshiba Satellite A665-S5177X laptop. This laptop sports a SB i5-2410M CPU with an Intel G2 120Gig SSD with the latest Intel Firmware and a fresh install of Win 7 64bit Home Premium.

The two drivers in question are the latest official release of Intel RST 10.1.0.1008. These drivers which supposedly does not have official support for the 6 series chipset. (Even thought they install okay and are recommended for install on SB laptops by most manufactures) and the latest INF driver 9.2.0.1030 for Intel chipsets. It turns out the INF chipset driver has a SATA controller specific driver for the 6 series chipsets used with the new Sandy Bridge CPU’s.

My interest was how these drivers compare performance wise with each other with an SSD. I ran this test using latest version crystaldiskmark benchmarking software 3.0.1 x64 with no tweaks to the operating system (the JJB and the other recognized tweak whose name escapes me right now). I wanted a quick easy test that mainly tested read/write, that’s why I choose the crystaldiskmark software.

The following screen shot shows the result using the RST driver:



The following uses the INF driver:



The interesting thing to note is the RST drivers seems to offer consistently faster write numbers while the INF drivers offer faster reads (except for the sequential reads).

Thought I’d share this with the community. Feel free to post your thoughts, and comments.

 

Synthetic testing is a nice appetizer but doesn't really say much.

How about some real world file copies or boot times?

PS. interesting that the INF driver has better 4K random reads.

 

Following is an excerpt from the Readme of Intel chipset utility 9.2.0.1030:

"The Intel(R) Chipset Device Software installs Windows*
INF files to the target system. These files outline to
the operating system how to configure the Intel(R) chipset
components in order to ensure that the following features
function properly."

That means this is no driver as Intel Rapid Storage is.

I assume you deinstalled the Intel Rapid Storage driver before doing the second test. If you did, you just used the Microsoft AHCI driver contained in Windows 7.

The Intel Rapid Storage driver contains the necessary inf files for the supported Intel SATA devices. I just crosschecked the supported devices of IRST 10.1.0.1008 with 10.5.0.1015. They support the same devices.