Which one would you go for MSAHCI vs IRST (840 EVO)

On my 1 TB Samsung 840 Evo (NO RAPID mode)

CrystalDiskMark with Intel Chipset Drivers v9.4.0.1023 (W7)



CrystalDiskMark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 (W7)



Based on these scores, which would you prefer? to go with the Intel Chipset Drivers (which is the default msahci) or with the IRST Driver?

 

Umgh, IRST duhh... The scores are much better with it... I don't even know why your'e asking...

 

because the 512K scores of the MSAHCI driver are slightly higher

 

I wouldn't care about what the benchmarks show - no matter which specific aspect seems better...

In every case I have tried (at least a couple of hundred systems so far) the Intel RST driver was superior in day to day, real world use (and that was even with HDD's).

Windows 8.1x64 Pro Update 1 and SSD's magnify the effect that a properly installed (floppy version of the drivers) IRST driver does: it makes the O/S disappear in a very nice way. Your input seems directly connected to the O/S - just as it should be.

With MSAHCI drivers? To me, it makes every drive seem like a Samsung* SSD... 'laggy'.

Yeah; no matter what the 'scores' say.

(The 1TB EVO OP'ed by 30% being the sole exception and the star of what 'snappiness' means to me).

 

The differences in those two benchmarks are pretty much trivial, even the 512K benchmarks. Both drivers would give you pretty decent performance simply because the SSD will give you pretty decent performance.

That said, I'd personally go for Intel's drivers, just out of preference.

 

Agreed. I think you would be hard pressed to notice 7MB/s difference in real life.

 

thanks a lot guys! I appreciate everyone's comments.

IRST it is then. I am doing OP by 30% right away due to tilleroftheearth`s advice he seems to have a pHD in SSDs

 

IIRC, I thought that the Evo already came with a certain amount of OP. Probably not 30%, but something sizable.

 

not sure, my 1 TB Evo shows as 931.39 GB in Disk Management.

Then in Samsung Magician, it recommends an OP of 10% so what is that? 10 + through Magician and 10 done internally in the drive?

And to sum things up, how much shall I set my OP in Magician now for optimal performance? 20% or 30% since you may be right that it has some factory OP?

EDIT: I don't think it is OPed internally, the reason it shows 931 GB is because:

So I guess I need to OP it by 30% and lose more space

 

It's all up to preference really. Tiller usually recommends 30%, I think that's a little excessive and I usually keep my drives around 10-15%.

 

but what if my drives even at max usage have like 50% free space, wouldn't that be the same as OP or it's different? if that was the case, then a 10% OP or a 30% would give me the same result right? correct me if I'm wrong please

 

Free space != unallocated space.


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so no need to OP by 30% in my case, i'll leave it as the Samsung recommended 10% then

 

!= means does not equal


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oh great! sorry I don't know the sign lingo.

Ill OP by 30% then! sigh...

 

The 1TB EVO's I use (and setup for clients) are 650GB usable capacity.

150GB C:\ drive for the O/S and Programs and

400GB Z:\ drive for my Data.


If you do the calculations, you can see that I ignore any internal OP'ing an SSD manufacturer may do - even more, the actual amount I OP is based on the actual reported MB's during Windows 8.1 setup (yeah, I'm that anal).


If I'm spending $300 for a drive and up, I don't want to feel it slowing down as I'm using it. And with less than 30% OP'ing (even for what I consider 'light' usage), I feel like I threw money away for speed and instead traded it for a relatively small increase in capacity.

I buy/use an SSD for the snappiness/productivity it offers - when I also need capacity I rely on something like my QNAP TS-870 Pro with 8x 4TB HDD's in RAID 5.

 

Dang! I wanted to say that.

 

Why do I suddenly get this sense of deja-vu? Anyway, anything not connected as an ATA drive isn't going to get the benefit of TRIM. Unless it's specifically a RAID-0 array under IRST anyway. So unless you're running RAID-0, stick with the Intel chipset drivers, because as I understand it, using IRST makes drives appear as SCSI to the OS.

 

I actually just read that today on Anandtech forums!! very interesting and this means that anyone NOT using RAID 0 should re-think installing the IRST driver since the recommendation usually is that IRST driver must be installed even if you don't have a RAID setup for better performance! Not on an SSD!!

 

I found that Samsung's SSD Magician could not talk to my EVO mSATA (no SMART data etc) when IRST was installed, so IRST was shown the door.

John