The Crucial m4 SSD Update: Faster with FW0009
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 31, 2011 12:56 AM ESTFinal Words
The 0009 firmware update for Crucial's m4 drive mostly improves its sequential read performance. Unless you're doing a lot of large file copies to another high speed SSD or drive array you likely won't see any huge gains in real world use. Where does the m4 stand in the grand scheme of things? It is among the SF-2281 and Intel SSD 510s of the world when it comes to performance. The latter two generally benchmark better but all three drives do well in real world usage.
| SSD Pricing | |||||
| Crucial m4 | Intel SSD 510 | Kingston HyperX | OCZ Vertex 3 | ||
| 256GB/250GB/240GB | $390.99 | $504.99 | $489.99 | ||
| 128GB/120GB | $227.99 | $276.99 | $244.99 | $219.99 | |
At $390.99 the m4 is one of the most affordable 256GB drives on the market today. You don't get the best absolute performance in all of our tests but you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. The m4 does quite well in our light workload which is very representative of a typical desktop usage experience. My only concern with the m4 is really how bad the controller will let performance get with sustained random writes. I'd gladly trade lower 4KB random write performance for better sustained numbers.
If you don't want a SandForce drive and want something more affordable than Intel's SSD 510, the m4 just started looking a lot better.
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iwod - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
I am one of the few,( or many ) who don't want a Sandforce based SSD and cant afford the Intel SSD. Crucial provides a very good balance SSD for a competitive price with m4. And the 0009 Firmware just sweeten the deal.landerf - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
This drive has on a few occasions, and as recently as yesterday, had 15% codes at newegg. I got mine for $350 with one, and for a few days there you could get it as low as $333. Nuts deal for a drive that not only offers more usable space but none of that random BSOD shit you get with SF. Wait for another 15% off code, grab one, profit.Marlin1975 - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
You always use intel for testing SSDs. How about compare a 950southbridge SATA 6gb to a Z68 Intel SATA 6gb?dac7nco - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
That might be interesting; From what I've seen from some reviews, AMD's chipsets have improved their SATA-III throughput to a near-parity with Intel's... I don't remember specifics about random I/O.Daimon
zsero - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
What is the Kingston HyperX drive in this test? Is it just me, who missed it? It is faster than EVERYTHING else, yet not a single article about it?DanNeely - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
It's the representative SF-2281 SSD. Presumably it didn't get a full article because another SF2281 with identical flash chips had already been reviewed.http://www.anandtech.com/show/4390/kingstons-hyper...
Holly - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
Running Vertex 3 on P67 chipset (ASUS board)... since firmware 09 release I had two hard locks requiring shut down computer (disconnect from UPS, wait, reconnect, run)... so the situation was much better... instead of few locks a day to one per month... given the machine runs 24/7.Installed firmware 11 today, curious if it solves the issue completely.
Other than that starting visual studio 2010 and opening project below 2 secs is just epic. Though as long as my machine runs without issues for 3 monts at least, I can't recommend the drive to any customer or friend.
gamoniac - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
I saw on newegg that Crucial m4 SSD 128Gb is on newegg's Shell Shocker today, in case you plan on buying one.Nakecat - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
I been doing some research regarding of C300 TRIM with RAID 0 or RAID 5, most of the answer i found are tell ing me that TRIM doesn't work in RAID Array even with TRIM OS. Is this true?MarkLuvsCS - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
TRIM commands cannot be passed to a raid array. TRIM can be passed to drives on systems that have an nonraided SSD alongside raided standard drives (this has only happened a few months ago).Some drives do not require trim because they have an internal garbage collection built into the firmware such as the sandforce drives. Although Crucial has garbage collection as well, it does not occur aggressively to recover if the drive performance gets murdered by random writes. It WILL eventually recover its performance but TRIM makes sure this is never a problem.
Sandforce seems the only way to go for RAIDed drives but I would say you're better off buying a larger SSD to begin with to avoid these problems.