Crucial m4 And Intel SSD 320: The Other SSD Competitors

Name: Meet Crucial&#039;s m4, Micron&#039;s RealSSD C400 - Crucial m4 And Intel SSD 320: The Other SSD Competitors
Author: Andrew Ku

by Andrew Ku March 28, 2011 at 9:00 AM

33 Comments

Meet Crucial's m4, Micron's RealSSD C400

Crucial's m4: Not Old, Not New

Similar to the SSD 320-series, Crucial's newest drive is more of a refresh than a completely new product. These two product launches are really driven by the shift over to 25 nm NAND flash.

Beyond the rebranded name and memory, there isn't much difference between m4 and its predecessor (Crucial's RealSSD C300 review). The improved specs are primarily the result of the new 25 nm process. Sequential read performance sees a small bump up to 415 MB/s, while sequential write performance is now 260 MB/s. In comparison, random read performance has dropped to 40 000 IOPS, but random writes have increased to 50 000 IOPS.

	Crucial RealSSD C300 128 GB	Crucial RealSSD C300 256 GB	Crucial m4 128 GB	Crucial m4 256 GB
Sequential Read	Up to 355 MB/s	Up to 355 MB/s	Up to 415 MB/s	Up to 415 MB/s
Sequential Write	Up to 140 MB/s	Up to 215 MB/s	Up to 175 MB/s	Up to 260 MB/s
4 KB Random Read	Up to 50 000 IOPS	Up to 60 000 IOPS	Up to 40 000 IOPS	Up to 40 000 IOPS
4 KB Random Write	Up to 30 000 IOPS	Up to 45 000 IOPS	Up to 35 000 IOPS	Up to 50 000 IOPS
Cache	256 MB	256 MB	256 MB	256 MB
NAND Flash Components	34 nm MLC, ONFI 2.1	34 nm MLC, ONFI 2.1	25 nm MLC, ONFI 2.2	25 nm MLC, ONFI 2.2
Raw NAND	128 GB	256 GB	128 GB	256 GB
Interface	SATA 6Gb/s	SATA 6Gb/s	SATA 6Gb/s	SATA 6Gb/s

Inside Crucial's m4

Micron tells us this is the same Marvell 8SS9174 controller seen in Crucial’s C300, with a slight revision for ONFI 2.2 compatibility. Architecturally, nothing has changed. Even though the labels suggest three different generations, this is more a matter of firmware.

At the controller's core, there are two ARM9 processors which operate in tandem; one handles host request and other handles NAND requests. Some load balancing occurs when demand on one processor gets too high.

Crucial's RealSSD C300

Intel's SSD 510

Crucial's m4

Micron has carried the massive 256 MB cache employed on the C300 over to the m4. Only the 64 GB models have 128 MB. The cache is used mostly for temporary functions, such as table mapping and write tracking. Whenever a write occurs, the controller performs a bit of cleanup to ensure there are enough clean blocks to prevent any performance slow-down, and when the drive sits idle, some garbage collection occurs. This functions independently of the OS, and it's a recipe that Micron believes best preserves performance.

We are still waiting on pricing information for the m4. We are told that the new drives won't be as expensive as the C300's launch prices, but that's fairly vague. The C300 hit the scene with a suggested price of $149.99 (64 GB model), $299.99 (128 GB model), and $599.99 (256 GB model). At close to $2.50 per gigabyte, it was a fair deal, but nothing we would get excited over. Today, the C300 hits close to $2 per gigabyte, and we are hoping the m4 introduces further drops to the C300's price.

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rainwilds

Oooo, Crucial or Vertex? Decisions, decisions!
Could you expand on the Full Disk Encryption capabilities of the Intel 320?
If you can actually use hardware FDE on that drive (rather than just secure erase), that's a winner for me.
bto

Why does the Intel 510 250GB appear to have two scores in crystalmark? (469.4 and 259.7) on the top benchmark on page: "Benchmark Results: CrystalDiskMark Streaming Performance" the specs are identical for both.
poppasmurf

Great lil tidbit, wonder what the difference will be between other SSD's with different interface connections other than physical appearance and the interface connection. More on the lines of pro's and con's between the SSD interface connections I'm referring to the OCZ PCI-e drives vs. SATA 6GB just a thought to stir up the hoop la of ssd's :P
JohnnyLucky

I am beginning to wonder if we haven't reached the point where the human eye and brain are finding it harder to differentiate performance among ssd's. Some mainstream benchmarks seem to suggest that. Some of the benchmarks in this review seem to indicate the same. There are some very tight groupings.
henryvalz

At the speed points that SSDs are functioning, I'm beginning to think that durability and reliability might be the best basis for decision. I would also really like to see some boot times from Windows 7, or loading time for games.
kev_stev

Does anyone know when the vertex 3 and M4 are going to actually be available? I have heard rumors that the vertex 3 will be released "any day now" since mid march...
iamtheking123

I'll go SSD in my next build, probably in a year and a half. Right now I'm satisfied with Raid 0-ed 1TB Caviar Blacks.
foscooter

No mention of a release date. When will they be "in stores?" Q2 isn't exact enough.
zerapio

Alert! Spelling police is coming and their PISSED

(yes, it was intentional)
microking4u

Why are the I/O's for this drive way off on your review compared to others such as Anand and PCPer?
groberts101

Would have been interesting to see those Vantage marks on a Vertex 3 that hadn't already been hammered into a throttled state by all the previous tests. While it obviously shows the stamina and expected performance of the V3 after extremely heavy usage, the test doesn't take into consideration what many will see on newly installed drives that are used moderately. From that standpoint, the testing protocol is flawed, IMO.

IOW, the testing protocol in reverse would have been more interesting to see typical Vantage scores from an unthrottled controller. I know for fact through personal beta-testing of the V3 that they would have been much higher.

Or even better yet would be too take into account the special Durawrite throttling which the Sandforce drives STILL have built into the firmware(though not nearly as aggressive as the V2). Would surely give a nice little boost to SF through secure erase cleansing. If done at the 50% point it would show the potential in certain portions of the test suite that most WOULD see when not hitting thier drives with benchmark after benchmark in some sort of "hammer em' till the dust settles" protocol.

Decent enough writeup though and all the review sites will eventually get it figured out, I guess.
PraxGTI

Our SQL server has done more than 5*10^25 I/O Write Bytes in its 3 years lifespan. I really doubt the reliability of SSDs in a corporate server, although the IOs would be nice since our server can be crippled to 500% disk usage with disk queue sizes up to 8 at times.
praxgtiOur SQL server has done more than 5*10^25 I/O Write Bytes in its 3 years lifespan. I really doubt the reliability of SSDs in a corporate server, although the IOs would be nice since our server can be crippled to 500% disk usage with disk queue sizes up to 8 at times.

How did you work that one out,

10^24 bytes is a 1 yobibyte = 2^80 bytes = 1208925819614629174706176 bytes = 1,024 zebibytes

1 zebibyte = 270 bytes = 1180591620717411303424 bytes = 1,024 exbibytes

1 exbibyte = 260 bytes = 1152921504606846976 bytes = 1,024 pebibytes

All of the data in the world on every hard drive is estimated at around 500 exbibytes.

even in bits you are in order of several magnitude off
acku

342145 said:

Would have been interesting to see those Vantage marks on a Vertex 3 that hadn't already been hammered into a throttled state by all the previous tests. While it obviously shows the stamina and expected performance of the V3 after extremely heavy usage, the test doesn't take into consideration what many will see on newly installed drives that are used moderately. From that standpoint, the testing protocol is flawed, IMO. IOW, the testing protocol in reverse would have been more interesting to see typical Vantage scores from an unthrottled controller. I know for fact through personal beta-testing of the V3 that they would have been much higher. Or even better yet would be too take into account the special Durawrite throttling which the Sandforce drives STILL have built into the firmware(though not nearly as aggressive as the V2). Would surely give a nice little boost to SF through secure erase cleansing. If done at the 50% point it would show the potential in certain portions of the test suite that most WOULD see when not hitting thier drives with benchmark after benchmark in some sort of "hammer em' till the dust settles" protocol. Decent enough writeup though and all the review sites will eventually get it figured out, I guess.

Hi groberts101,

The test are actually run backwards. We just have help in a different order in the review.

Cheers,
Andrew
TomsHardware
acku

433483 said:

Why does the Intel 510 250GB appear to have two scores in crystalmark? (469.4 and 259.7) on the top benchmark on page: "Benchmark Results: CrystalDiskMark Streaming Performance" the specs are identical for both.

I think there is a legend in the lower right hand corner. One is using the 6Gb/s port and one is using the 3Gb/s port.
acku

254934 said:

Why are the I/O's for this drive way off on your review compared to others such as Anand and PCPer?

Which ones are you referencing?
ww2003

From what i have been hearing the new vortec 3 is going to be the best SSD on the market with faster speeds the any other one has right now.
zodiacfml

I like the part in the conclusion that one not need the fastest SSDs out there especially for desktop uses.
In my opinion, Intel has a point with their new products and pricing, enable bigger capacities at lower capacities.
zodiacfml

I meant prices.

zodiacfmlI like the part in the conclusion that one not need the fastest SSDs out there especially for desktop uses. In my opinion, Intel has a point with their new products and pricing, enable bigger capacities at lower capacities.
vvhocare5

A couple of observations:
1. I was showing these charts to a coworker and pointed out that the worst SSD had 10x better performance than a good current rotating hard drive - and the good ones were 50x or better than that. We can split hairs over which SSD but the question I ask is why are you still on a hard drive?

2. The stupid SQL server calc continues to show the ignorance people have about SSD's. 99% of that SQL server's use is READS. SSD's can read all day long - its the write cycles that count against them. The early Intel drives guaranteed 100G of writes per day for 5 years - Im not sure if the other mfg list these specs or if they are unchanged.

In business use the question you have to ask yourself is does the cost of an SSD drive either defer an upgrade or somehow return more money than you spent on it. If no, then dont buy SSD's. For personal use we have no return - its pure fun and enjoyment to see how fast these things are....
You show that the read performance of the m4 degrades significantly over time with usage. How did this degradation affect the benchmark performance of the drive? I'm mostly interested in the PCMark Vantage benchmarks where the m4 was pretty consistently the leader -- was that a fresh drive or a used drive?
"5*10^25 I/O Write Bytes in its 3 years lifespan" seems to be a bit far fetched...

5*10^25 =
50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes

Number of seconds in 3 years: 3*365*24*60*60 = 94,608,000 sec

Divide bytes by seconds to get continuous average transfer rate:
528,496,533,062,743,108 Bytes/sec

Roughly 7 Billion people in the world (assuming everyone has internet which they dont, and everyone is always downloading, which they aren't)

Transfer per person:
75,499,504 Bytes/sec/person

Which is 72MB per person per second. Not possible!

This would mean 7 Billion people in the world are consuming data constantly with their 578 Mbs (mega-bit per second) Internet connection!!

I WANT A 578 Mbs internet connection!!!
acku

Quote:

You show that the read performance of the m4 degrades significantly over time with usage. How did this degradation affect the benchmark performance of the drive? I'm mostly interested in the PCMark Vantage benchmarks where the m4 was pretty consistently the leader -- was that a fresh drive or a used drive?

Fresh out of the box. You'll see the m4 hit 65k in the PCMark HDD suite. I'll have to double check the numbers, but off the top of my head I think it was like ~54k in a steady state. Don't quote me on that though.

Remember this is for the 256 GB drive. The m4 128 GB model is suppose to hit around 55k right out of the box.