Crucial MX100 (256GB & 512GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on June 2, 2014 3:00 PM ESTRandom Read/Write Speed
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews.
Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). We perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time.
Random read performance remains mostly unchanged. The 512GB MX100 appears to be slightly faster than the M550 while the 256GB version is a few megabytes slower.
Random write performance, on the other hand, is slightly up at the lower queue depths. This is likely due to firmware optimizations as the performance is up regardless of the capacity, although once the queue depth is increased the 256GB version falls behind due to the more limited amount of NAND die.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we run a 1 minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
Sequential performance is also up by a bit, although the difference isn't dramatic.
AS-SSD Incompressible Sequential Read/Write Performance
The AS-SSD sequential benchmark uses incompressible data for all of its transfers. The result is a pretty big reduction in sequential write speed on SandForce based controllers.
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s44 - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Space will be the same, they're just advertised differently. But the Crucial idles at much lower power than the Seagate, so I'd consider switching to save battery life.tobho - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Some serious question over here: is this drive a real competitor to the Sammys Evo or even Pro SSDs? I was planning on buying the 256Pro but the Crucial seems to perform better in a lot of tasks. I cannot really differentiate much but the price: 256Pro = 512MX100hojnikb - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Just get MX100. For the price, its a steal..rvb3n - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Hi, can someone give me a suggestion for a pro SSD for a laptop with about 500 GB? Is the Samsung 840 Pro still the king (price/performance)?blackrain - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Looking forward to the Bench being updated with the Crucial MX100 line:http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/65
blackrain - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
I wonder how my Samsung 830 128GB compares to the MX100 128GB? Again, looking forward to the Bench being updated with the MX100 line.Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
They were there, but just hidden so we wouldn't break NDA. Should be visible now :)rahuldesai1987 - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
A 256Gbit die should enable a $300 1TB and $600 2TB drive, 6 months down the line. Hope we see a TLC Samsung 850EVO soon, at even cheaper prices.sequoia464 - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Killer prices on these already,, picked up a 256 GB drive this morning for ~$90 delivered.Oyster - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
For those that are interested, looks like these are on a fire sale.512GB $200, 256GB $100, 128GB $70 AC
http://slickdeals.net/f/6972254-crucial-mx100-soli...