Trending

Crucial m4 And Intel SSD 320: The Other SSD Competitors

By

Two more SSDs recently landed in our lab. We cover the "Postville Refresh" Intel SSD 320 and Crucial’s new m4, and stack them up against Intel's SSD 510 and OCZ’s Vertex 3. If you're shopping for an SSD, read this comparison before you make your choice.

Benchmark Results: CrystalDiskMark Streaming Performance

Sequential read throughput should be a major boon to video editors and gamers looking for fast level load times. Overall, our results mirror what we see with Iometer. Crucial's m4 and Intel's 510 continue to fight for third, but this time Intel wins out. The m4 is supposed to reach sequential read speeds up to 415 MB/s, which suggests that Crucial may be slightly overstating performance.

Intel's SSD 320 performs at the top of the SATA 3Gb/s family and matches its rated sequential read performance of 270 MB/s. Even though performance between the drives in the middle fall close to one another, the scores from our 3 Gb/s port configuration show these drives are taking full advantage of the narrower SATA pipeline.

Intel's SSD 510 leads the pack in sequential writes by achieving greater than 300 MB/s—very close to its rated 315 MB/s. This is perhaps the only situation in which the Vertex 3s fall slightly behind. Crucial's m4 slots in between the two Vertex 3s, pushing 275 MB/s to exceed its rated 260 MB/s. 

Again, the SSD 320 matches its rated throughput of 220 MB/s. This is about a 2x fold increase from the performance we saw with the X25-M (G2).

OCZ’s Vertex 3s come nowhere near the 525 MB/s cited in its literature. They’re still very fast, though. Surprisingly, we should point out that the Vertex 2 based on 25 nm NAND even gets outperformed by Intel’s X25-M.

33 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rainwilds 28 March 2011 21:23
    Oooo, Crucial or Vertex? Decisions, decisions!
    Reply
  • 28 March 2011 22:28
    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.
    Reply
  • bto 28 March 2011 22:31
    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.
    Reply
  • poppasmurf 28 March 2011 22:42
    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
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky 28 March 2011 23:13
    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.
    Reply
  • henryvalz 28 March 2011 23:49
    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.
    Reply
  • kev_stev 29 March 2011 00:13
    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...
    Reply
  • iamtheking123 29 March 2011 02:35
    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.
    Reply
  • foscooter 29 March 2011 03:19
    No mention of a release date. When will they be "in stores?" Q2 isn't exact enough.
    Reply
  • zerapio 29 March 2011 03:20
    Alert! Spelling police is coming and their PISSED

    (yes, it was intentional)
    Reply