SSD Review: 5.03 Firmware TRIM Restored,Force GT vs. GS Storage   Page 1

Reviewer: Jon Coulter Article Publish Date: 9/7/2012

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

This is going to be a quick look at 5.03 Firmware that restores TRIM. At the same time we are going to compare the performance of 5.02 versus 5.03 firmware and performance of a Corsair Force GT 240GB versus a Corsair Force GS 240GB. This is the first time we have been able to compare these 2 drives on equal ground because it’s the first time they are both able to run on the same firmware.

 

TRIM for SandForce drives has been broken since the introduction of 5 series firmware until now. TRIM is absolutely essential for sustained performance over time so to get it back is BIG news and something we have patiently been awaiting for quite some time.

 

5.03 restores TRIM but it has lowered peak performance a little in some areas, in other areas it has shown a little better speed in comparison to 5.02. We have tested the GS with both firmware revisions 5.02 and 5.03. The GT has only been available with 3 series firmware until now. We’ve wanted to compare the 2 fastest drives in Corsair’s line up for a while now and thought we should share our findings with you.

 

This is going to be brief and to the point so let’s dive right in and see how TRIM has been restored and how these drives compare to one another performance wise. We will begin with Vantage Fill testing because it exposed the TRIM issue and gives us a recap of what the GS performance looked like with 5.02 having no TRIM.

 

Force GS 240GB 5.02 Firmware clean:

 

 

 

Peak performance of 5.02 is quite astounding 90,000 points on a clean drive.

 

 

 

Force GS 240GB 5.02 Firmware 25% filled:

 

 

Looks fantastic 60,000 points.

 

 

 

Force GS 240GB 5.02 Firmware 50% filled:

 

 

Almost 53,000 points.

 

 

 

Force GS 240GB 5.02 Firmware 75% filled:

 

 

51,000 points very good for a 240GB drive and much higher than any non-SandForce 240GB drive can score.

 

 

 

All data deleted from the drive and here’s the problem when there is no TRIM:

 

 

Our GS running on 5.02 firmware with broken TRIM recovers hardly any performance when data is deleted. If TRIM were functioning the drive would have recovered to nearly the performance when clean. This was a demonstration of a drives performance with broken TRIM. Now we will see what the same tests look like with functioning TRIM.