I was bored yesterday so I decided to bench my Vertex 4 128GB with Microsoft stock drivers and the latest Intel RST v12.6.0.1028 (I flashed OROM to 12.6.0.1826).
The thing about the Vertex 4 is that it's not a good drive to bench since it's tuned for situations that benchmarks never test. Among other things it's got a very aggressive GC meaning it will start very very soon after a write/delete, and benchmarks (AS SSD and ATTO) Write/Delete before testing Read speed.
Anyway, after totally removing and cleaning the system of any Intel drivers (followed a guide to remove IaStorF and IaStorA since they're still left in the system after an uninstall) I ran each test three times, added the results for each category and divided by 3 to get an average in both AS SSD and ATTO. Then I did the same after installing Intel RST v12.6.0.1028. This is the result:
Slightly underwhelming but I guess the drivers are more about sending/receiving requests in a timely fashion and talk to the AHDI-controller chip on the SSD(or any AHCI-SATA device) and create a link to RAM. MSAHCI is simply generic to support drives on any chipset and device combo while Intels RST drivers can drop a lot of checks and bloat and do certain things a bit more effective. But they're really not having much of a noticeable impact on general performance with single-drive AHCI SSD's. RAID on the other hand...
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
