JMicron JMF667H Reference Design (128GB & 256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on May 29, 2014 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
I have to say I am positively surprised. Given how bad some of JMicron's early designs were, I could not expect much from the JMF667H. We had a try with the JMF667H in the WD Black2 but in that case we only got the picture of how the JMF667H performs with one NAND configuration. The Black2 itself had some other limitation as well (like the lack of caching option) that made the product as a whole not worth the money and probably made the JMF667H look worse than it really was. However, as our benchmarks show, the JMF667H can be very competitive when paired with the right NAND and pretty decent even with cheaper NAND.
Sure the JMF667H still is not the fastest controller on the market but the good thing is that it is not trying to be. JMicron's strategy has always been to provide more of a budget alternative for the mainstream market instead of competing for the performance crown.
The JMF667H is not perfect and there are a couple of things I would like to see. The first one is support for TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 encryption standards. The data we carry around is constantly becoming more valuable and as a result more vulnerable to theft, so support for these two standards is crucial. In addition, I bet it would help JMicron to get their controller to more OEMs, especially in the high profit business/IT space where the customers are willing to pay the extra for encryption support. Hopefully this is something JMicron will include in their next generation controller.
The second thing is IO consistency. While the new firmware improved IO consistency and the performance no longer drops to zero IOPS, I think there is still room for improvement. I would like to see the performance being more consistent even if it means lower maximum IOPS because consistent performance means the end-user won't see variation in performance. However, I'm willing to overlook this since we are dealing with a low-cost controller and the IO consistency is already okay, but it could always be better.
All in all, when paired with the right NAND (i.e. Toshiba), the JMF667H can certainly be a noteworthy controller. It provides performance that is similar or very close to Marvell based SSDs but at a lower cost and with bundled firmware. However, I think the big question is whether the JMF667H offers enough cost savings when paired with the more expensive Toshiba NAND. As NAND makes up the biggest part of the bill of materials, it can be hard to overcome the saving from cheaper NAND, but I believe this is ultimately up to the OEM and their relations with Toshiba, Micron, JMicron, and so on. With IMFT NAND the JMF667H is still decent and I can see it being the lowest-end drive for OEMs, which is where it sits well due to the cheaper controller and NAND. For a light user the difference in performance is likely negligible anyway, and that is ultimately the market for low-end SSDs.
I am eagerly waiting to hear about JMicron's plans for PCIe. The JMF667H was admittedly late and at this point it can be rather difficult to gain interest from OEMs as everyone is preparing for PCIe. Hopefully JMicron's PCIe solution will be more timely and hopefully I'll have some details after meeting with them at Computex next week.
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Bindibadgi - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
I'm genuinely wondering if the photos are artistically filtered or simply just that bad??hp79 - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
I think it's being artistically shot that way. I don't like it either. Photos from AMD article looks fine.Nice article though. Good to see another contender in SSD market, back from the hall of shame.
It's going to be tough though. After sticking a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB in my desktop, and getting a rMBP13 laptop which has proprietary crazy fast SSD, I'm no longer in the market. But if I were to buy another SSD, it'll be whoever is cheapest (after rebates and coupons) with reasonable performance. And it should be a 7mm height so it also fits modern ultra thin laptops, not stupid 9.5mm with no reason.
Kristian Vättö - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
Better now? I was in a hurry last night as the deadline was approaching way too quickly, so the quality suffered as a result. Bear in mind that we all work from our homes, so the camera equipment and lighting differs greatly from review to review.MrPoletski - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
For the love of god, why is it that on every SSD review here, every time I look at the performance consistancy graphs it is always for 4KB random write QD32?3 separate tabbed graphs, all saying 4KB random write QD32 - yet clearly only one of them is, the others being perhaps 4kb reads, or 4kb writes QD 1 or 2.
It's this way every time I read an SSD review on anandtech, has nobody noticed this and fixed it yet or what?
MrPoletski - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
haha, this time there was an explanation in the article. Ok. IGNORE ME LOL.milli - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
'Micron's roadmaps showed that a SATA 6Gbps JMF66x series was planned for the second half of 2010, which made sense given that Intel was integrating SATA 6Gbps to their 6-series chipsets in early 2011. But for some reason, the JMF66x never made it to the market on time.'I don't think that's entirely true.
The Kingston SSDNow V200 used a JMicron JMF661 or JMF662 controller. That product launched towards the end of 2011 with great difficulties. The controller wasn't broken but the firmware was. It took Kingston six months to release a firmware that fixed the problems. Before that firmware the drive was utterly unusable (paused up to 5 seconds sometimes). After the firmware update it became usable and speed was then as advertised.
You can read about it here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/solid-state-drives...
This was very weird because the JMF618 found in some Kingston drives, worked very well (as found in Anand's reviews).
As for the JMF667H, I've used two Transcend SSD340 256GB drives. I suppose they are using the old firmware but performance is okay. Using those systems feels more or less like a system with a M500. Nothing earth shattering.
go4aBetterPC - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
While nice, I think JMicron is late to the market by about 1 to 2 years. For example the Micron M500 is already on the market. I would just use a another controller such as Marvell. Competitors are announcing and eventually releasing PCIe controllers. Intel has been slow to invigorate the PC market. Perhaps they are too distracted by all their Broadwell yield delays. And some key providers like Micron are trying to make their own controllers or already do in the case of Samsung, but already have relatively low cost SSD drives on the market. Perhaps JMicron should look for a buyer. The SSD market is highly competitive and there are lots of players and interest. I am hoping laptop manufacturers get their act together and start offering more ssd drives as a option. I have decided to not buy many laptops since they don't offer a 128gb or 256gb ssd drive. To me, this is the main way to invigorate the market. Too many companies wait for new Intel processors rather than take control of their own destiny. A $500 laptop that now costs $650 with a ssd would get good reviews and probably would gather a lot of sales.Shiitaki - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
I just recently picked up a Samsung Evo for school for virtualizing a cluster of computers. I ended up going with the Samsung for 3 reasons. One, consistently high performance, it's the 1TB version. Two, single manufacturer of the whole item, they don't source parts from 'whomever is cheaper'. I'm thinking of Kingston here. There are plenty of reviews of the drive, Samsung is proud of it, so plenty of reviews available.I looked at the Optima, a pair of them in fact. But I could only find one review, and I also didn't want to buy something where the review sample is superior to what they are selling to the consumer. While it was cheaper, I didn't have faith that PNY wouldn't do what Kingston has been caught doing.
The importance of your website to the consumer is huge. I'd like to express my appreciation for Anandtech.com's constant diligence. If I can't find a review on something with measurements, I won't buy it.