Crucial v4 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on November 22, 2012 1:01 PM 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 Light suite doesn't bring any better news either as the v4 is still over three times slower than any other SSD.
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Lone Ranger - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
On page two, you state that you are surprised to only find 8 packages on the board despite finding room for 16. In the next paragraph you state that the controller supports 8 channels. Is it possible to "gang" two packages together to one controller channel? If not, the controller is the reason that 16 packages aren't used.Kristian Vättö - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
The controller supports up to 32 NAND packages (i.e. 4 per channel). Pretty much all consumer-grade controllers have eight channels but support more than one package per channelLone Ranger - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
Thanks for the clarification.creed3020 - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
I stopped reading at Phison PS3105...Most people who know SSDs understand their controllers are useless even in a low end product.
Pessimism - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
Phison is the new JMicron.tjoynt - Saturday, November 24, 2012 - link
We spend so much time looking at the upper range of prrformance, it's nice to get a lower bound, too. :)It also demonstrates just how important a good controller is and how hard it is to make one. Also gives me a better idea of why usb flash drives and most devices with flash have so much lower performance than SSDs. Any one know what the cost differential is between a Psion and a Sandforce or Indilinx or Samsung?
infoilrator - Saturday, November 24, 2012 - link
The article implied about $10 more buys a better controller. I do not know where firmware vs hardware may make a difference.Crucual will sell these on the basis of its M4 reputation. Unfortunately I believe it will leave a large number of customers unset with crucial.
I do not want one at any price (hey, i found way better prices.
Would RAID0 help these any?
jack.fxx - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
Well, even though benchmark results of V4 are considerably lower than other contemporary SSDs, it still is decent SSD. For example Windows boot time of V4 is the same as any other SSD (see http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2010/6/ ) , average user won't notice any difference between Samsung 840 Pro and V4.Benchmark results are pretty much useless when comparing desktop SSDs, because SSD drives in desktops/laptops are at least 99% of time idle, which means that 2x faster SSD will improve performace of your system at most by 0.5%.
crimson117 - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
Casual users have gotten used to having 500GB, or 1TB of hard drive space, but few will use more than a small fraction of that capacity.A $99 128GB drive is perfect for most users and they don't realize what they're missing!
JonnyDough - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
At its current price, the Crucial V4 is not a good deal. However, Crucial is one of the few PC component manufacturers based in the USA (they employ American's as well) so when it comes to purchases for SSDs and RAM I often go with them or Kingston.