In IDE mode however in spite of correct SSD alignment it reached like the ADATA S511 and Crucial C400 a much slower performance.
Additionally the TRIM procedure of the SandForce 2281 controller is not as easy comprehensible.
The administration of the Dirty Cells is controlled in the background by the sandforce controller chip.
With other SSDs one can do a direct TRIM by filling and erasing the SSD data, but with the MX-DS Turbo SSD there was no recognizable TRIM after filling and erasing the cells procedure for cleaning the so-called “dirty cells”.

In IDE mode the SSD exceeded with approximately 346 MB/s the maximum transfer rate of the Serial ATA 2.0 interface, so that a SATA3 interface is really the best choice for this SSD.
The write performance in IDE mode reached relatively slow 162 MB/s.
But also in IDE mode the overall score reached very good 310 points, because for example the OCZ Agility 120GB SATA2 SSD reached only 138 points, ADATA S511 120GB reached 311 points, the 256GB m4 SSD reached 291 points and a 256GB C300 SSD reached 290 points.

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the AS SSD benchmark results (SATA3 IDE):

In AHCI mode also another result beneath the read performance was much higher than in the IDE mode and that is the important value “4K-64Thrd”.
4K means that small 4K blocks are read and/or written and with the 4K 64Thrd this is distributed on 64 Threads at the same time.
Thus the benchmark program simulate for example a typical program start.
Since the weighting of this value is very high in the AS-SSD benchmark tool,the total score in AHCI mode is with 491 points much higher than the previous one in IDE mode.
In AHCI mode the Mach Xtreme Technology MX-DS Turbo 120GB reached a very high read performance of 502,06 MB/s and a write performace of 161,23 MB/s which is almost identical to the legacy IDE result.

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the ATTO Disk benchmark values (SATA3):

Compared to this result, the read performance in AHCI mode is significantly increased in all transfer sizes.
Here we see a comparison of the conventional native IDE mode and the modern AHCI mode, which offers beside the higher performance also advantages like e.g. the support of NCQ (Native Command Queuing) and Hot-Plug.
This SSD reached in ATTO to date highest read rate and the to date highest write rate in our reviews.

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the ATTO Disk benchmark values (on SATA3 AHCI):

These ATTO disk benchmark values are compared with a small transfer size of 32KB and a large transfer size of 8192KB.
The bar chart already shows a first comparison to the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB hard disk drive, OCZ Agility 120GB SSD, Crucial 256GB C300 RealSSD and a few other SSDs, where the best 8192K result is reached by the Mach Xtreme Technology MX-DS Turbo with nearly identical values like the S511 120GB SSD.

Here is a comparison of the ATTO disk benchmark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives:

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the CrystalDiskMark values (SATA3):

As seen in the previous 4K-64Threads results, especially the read and write 4K QD32 and the sequential read result is much higher when operating in AHCI mode.

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the CrystalDiskMark values (SATA3 AHCI):

The following diagram shows the CrystalDiskMark results once again compared with other SSDs and platter drives, which are extended step by step.
In the CrystalDiskMark comparison one can see significant differences between the to-date tested Solid State Drives and Hard Disk Drives, where the tested Mach Xtreme Technology MX-DS Turbo 120GB SSD has currently the best read result in AHCI.

Here is a comparison of the CrystalDiskMark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives:

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark values (SATA3):

Here is a Snipping screenshot of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark values in AHCI mode (SATA3 AHCI):

Here is a comparison of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives: