Crucial's m4 SSD Tested At 64, 128, 256, And 512 GB

128 KB Sequential Performance

SSD manufacturers often want to stress random performance because they quite obviously decimate hard drives. Sequential accesses are still important to examine, however, because they represent a majority of an average desktop's operations.

The 512 GB m4 reigns king in our sequential read measurement.

As in random reads, the native 4 KB page size continues to give the 128 GB m4 a lead over its 256 GB big brother. But overall, the effect of capacity is much smaller than what we saw in random performance. The 64 GB m4 still achieves 205 MB/s. That's only 35% less than the 512 GB's 277.1 MB/s.

Sequential writes matter more when you're dealing with large files, like your movie library. Here, the 256 GB m4 performs just as well as the 512 GB m4.

Of course, if you're shopping for SSDs with a capacity less than 256 GB, you should expect less performance. The 128 GB m4 performs about 40% slower than its 256 and 512 GB brothers. If you cut capacity down to 64 GB, the m4 delivers a measly 23.9 MB/s. That's one-sixth the performance of the 128 GB m4 and one-tenth of the higher-capacity m4s.

In this case, Seagate's hard drive delivers better sequential write performance than the 64 GB m4.

  • wintermint
    I've been recommending the Crucial m4 128gb to people, and after seeing this.. I'm glad I did :]
    Reply
  • sceen311
    it'd be nice if they threw a 7200 rpm hardrive on the bench... We don't all have laptops ya know.
    Reply
  • compton
    I'm glad this was done. It's rare that you get the chance to stack all the capacity points up (as in never). I bought an Intel 510 120GB and a M4 64GB and my own testing showed that you'd never know the difference besides the capacity (in day to day use, besides lower max write MB/S). I kinda like keeping my system drive to a bare minimum -- just Win7 no swap or hibernate, Office, a few other apps, and then I keep my Steam folder on a separate drive. Simple. I will say that if you are building a new system, cut whatever you have to in order to fit at least a 64GB SSD -- the M4 is excellent at any capacity. I'd rather have to go down to an i3 from a 2500k than from a SSD to a HDD. I get tired of people saying "it's not worth it" and "they're not much faster than a 7200rpm". Those people must be doing it wrong.
    Reply
  • beenthere
    Now if they could only make these SSDs reliable, we could all enjoy some performance improvement. Intel, Micron, OCZ and Corsair to name a few have all had reliability/compatibility/firmware issues of some sort resulting in loss of data, which for me is simply unacceptable.
    Reply
  • Last month I got a 64GB for my laptop and a 128GB m4 for my desktop. So far no issues, and the speed is great. Glad I got the 128GB and not the 256GB.
    Reply
  • PCMark 7 Storage tests are just pathetic, they have messed some of them up on purpose it seems just to shrink the difference between systems containing SSD and the ones containing HDD only, useless bench from start to "finish"...
    Reply
  • ubercake
    These things are still too expensive.
    Reply
  • mroanhaus
    I picked up the 64 GB M4 two weeks ago on Newegg for under $90. I am so glad I bought it, the thing makes boot times lightning fast. I have Win7 64-bit, Photoshop, 3DS Max, Google Chrome, and a few little monitoring and Bitcoin mining apps on there and I STILL have 21 GB to spare. Don't buy the 128 GB unless you really need it, throwing Steam and other massive apps will be much better suited on a secondary HDD. SSDs are simply amazing and well worth the money spent, even if you're a cheapass like me they're still affordable. The time saved from having to wait around while booting your computer makes SSDs worth the money imo
    Reply
  • burnley14
    See how they all hover pretty close to the same price per gigabyte, while sequential write and random write performance trend upward? Those are the spoils available to folks willing to spend more on higher capacities.

    This is true, but in 6 months when the whole lineup is outdated and the next generation of drives blows these ones away, those that spent more are going to have spent the extra money without much purpose.
    Reply
  • cknobman
    burnley14This is true, but in 6 months when the whole lineup is outdated and the next generation of drives blows these ones away, those that spent more are going to have spent the extra money without much purpose.
    Well going by your logic why should anyone ever spend money on anything in technology??? Guess its always a waste huh?

    Failed logic.
    Reply