The Crucial m4 SSD Update: Faster with FW0009
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 31, 2011 12:56 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2011 - Light Workload
Our new light workload actually has more write operations than read operations. The split is as follows: 372,630 reads and 459,709 writes. The relatively close read/write ratio does better mimic a typical light workload (although even lighter workloads would be far more read centric).
The I/O breakdown is similar to the heavy workload at small IOs, however you'll notice that there are far fewer large IO transfers:
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 - Light Workload IO Breakdown | ||||
| IO Size | % of Total | |||
| 4KB | 27% | |||
| 16KB | 8% | |||
| 32KB | 6% | |||
| 64KB | 5% | |||
Our lighter workload however shows about a 6% gain in performance over the older firmware. Granted a 6% increase in IO bound performance likely won't be noticeable in real world tasks, but it's always nice to see numbers moving up.
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nandreetta - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
I'm tempted to pick this up while Newegg has it on sale, but I've been trying to convince myself to buy an Intel SSD instead for a while now due to what everyone says about reliability. With a 2007 Santa Rosa MBP, I'll be limited by the slow SATA interface anyway, so reliability trumps speed. It's just hard to justify spending $300 or more on an upgrade rather than saving the money for a new machine when I'm this far outside of AppleCare.Any thoughts, Internet?
FunBunny2 - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
What's most interesting is that we may have another good controller. Marvell has been making them for a while, but not as a preferred vendor for some. A rock solid controller that's not SF or Intel is a good thing.daidaloss - Thursday, September 1, 2011 - link
+1fhaddad78 - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link
I'm still rockin my 160GB Intel X25-M SSD. It's hard to imagine the new drivers are faster than what I have now. It's the only drive in my computer and my box boots up lightning fast and apps open in an instant.Coup27 - Thursday, September 1, 2011 - link
fhaddad78 I concur. I am going to be building a small ITX system next month for a friend and I couldn't decide on either 64GB M4, 470 or slightly more expensive 80GB 320. Reading reviews on the 470 and the M4 question their ability to maintain their speed over the months of use.I've had an X25-M 80GB in my current setup for 8 months now running the Optimizer once a week. I decided to do something I've never done to my SSD, which is to benchmark it. After 8 months of use the values were exactly what Anand's graphs showed for my SSD when it was doing the rounds on the reviews.
Think my decsion has been made. Deffinately worth a little extra for the quality of the product.
daidaloss - Thursday, September 1, 2011 - link
My G2 80GB been running for a year and a half with practically the same performance as the moment I've bought it.Intel definitely nailed with the G2 series.
G2 are definitely worth all the money.
danwat12345 - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - link
Yea me to. G2 80GB, still keeps up with the new stuff with random reads on SATA 2!iRoNeTiK - Friday, September 2, 2011 - link
I got the same test results when I updated my m4 128GB my firmware to 0009 as well, thumbs up!METALMORPHASIS - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 - link
And still not ready for prime time.lin41411 - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
256GB M4 is about $430...1GB $1.67128GB M4 is about $200...1GB $1.56
64GB M4 is about $110...1GB $1.71
the price in China...
so,as a Chinese,I really can not understand why we are low income, but the price is high
T T