Idle Power Consumption

Since we truncate idle times to 25µs in our Storage Bench traces, they don't give a fully accurate picture of real world power consumption as idle power consumption is not taken properly into account. Hence I'm still reporting idle power consumption as a separate benchmark because it's one of the most critical metrics when it comes evaluating an SSD for mobile use.

Unfortunately I still don't have a way to test DevSleep power consumption due to lack of platform support, but my testbed supports HIPM+DIPM power commands (also referred to as Slumber power), so the results give a rather accurate picture of real-world idle power consumption. 

Idle Power Consumption (HIPM+DIPM)

The MX200 supports both DevSleep and slumber power states, so power efficiency during idle times is good. It's not Samsung level, but at ~60mW the MX200 enjoys a small benefit over the MX100 and is overall fairly average.

TRIM Validation

The move from Windows 7 to 8.1 introduced some problems with the methodology we have previously used to test TRIM functionality, so I had to come up with a new way to test. I tested a couple of different methods, but ultimately I decided to go with the easiest one that can actually be used by anyone. The software is simply called trimcheck and it was made by a developer that goes by the name CyberShadow in GitHub. 

Trimcheck tests TRIM by creating a small, unique file and then deleting it. Next the program will check whether the data is still accessible by reading the raw LBA locations. If the data that is returned by the drive is all zeros, it has received the TRIM command and TRIM is functional. 

And TRIM works!

 

ATTO & AS-SSD Final Words
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  • RAMdiskSeeker - Sunday, May 24, 2015 - link

    Would you be able to re-run and publish the benchmarks for the MX200 250GB drive formatted as a 100GB drive so that it runs entirely in SLC mode?
  • jihe - Monday, May 25, 2015 - link

    No way would I recommend Samsung to anyone. Selling TLC for the price of MLC? Massive lost of performance?
  • pseudoid - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Thank you for yet another great SSD review.
    I am from the old-skool camp when eeking out performance from drives meant the only alternative was SCSI drives spinning at 10k RPM and when SCSI cables cost more than the current 128GB SSDs. I gradually stepped up to VelociRaptor HDDs that were the only performance champs leaving behind SCSI HDDs and waiting for SSDs to get to affordable range. Yet those VelociRaptors are refusing to die in my system after all these years.
    A few years ago, I finally broke down and bought a Patriot Pyro 240GB as my current Win8.1Pro OS boot drive (all user data are directed to the older VelociRaptors to afford longevity to the Patriot Pyro).
    I use a utility called SSDLifePro (http://ssd-life.com) to periodically monitor the performance of my Patriot Pyro. It currently tells me the following info:
    READs = 27TB >> WRITEs = 15TB
    Energized Time = 23,635Hours (2yrs, 8mos,14days)
    Power Cycles = 609 times
    Estimated Lifetime = 6yrs, 11mos >> End Of Life = April 2022

    No, the above info is not for neener-neener, but strictly as a pre-amble to the following question:
    Why are Patriot (Ignite series) SSDs never discussed (or reviewed) in AnandTech?
    Ditto for Intel SSDs??
  • NvidiaWins - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link

    Crucial made the list of failing SSD's drives last week-
    read- http://www.extremetech.com/computing/173887-ssd-st...
  • NvidiaWins - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link

    Smart people buy Intel, Intel SSD's don't fail, ever.
    You see that Intel is considered the only reliable SSD manufacturer-
    http://www.extremetech.com/computing/173887-ssd-st...
  • Arkadius - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    Can You retest MX200 250GB with new firmware MU02?

    MU02 Crucial MX200 SSD (all form factors)
    Release Date: 07/14/2015
    Improved Read Performance on small address spans
    Improved Random Write performance on transfers not aligned to 4KB address boundaries
    Improved Acceleration Capacity Recovery after TRIM and SANITIZE commands
    Added Informative SMART thresholds for Attributes 202 and 5
    Added Support for READ DMA BUFFER, WRITE DMA BUFFER, and DOWNLOAD MICROCODE DMA Commands
    Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements

    http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/support-ssd-firmware
  • Resental - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link

    Quote, I just bought a MX200 250GB, I have obtained much better results then those in this article, maybe they solved with latest firmware.
  • Scott.deagan - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link

    I just purchased a Crucial MX200 500GB for my Dell M3800 laptop (Ubuntu edition). I need drive encryption for work. Have only been using it for a day so far, but am loving it. I'm not that fussed about performance issues between different SSD drives, all I know is this SSD is so much faster than the spin drive that came with the M3800. It feels like a new machine.

    Thanks for the review. Very informative. I'll check out the 850 EVO for my personal laptop.
  • drSeehas - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link

    "DRAM (DDR3-1600) 512 MB" for the 250 GB drive. Are you sure?
  • Firedrops - Saturday, February 13, 2016 - link

    Please show us actual capacity on storage device reviews! These things vary too much from manufacturer to manufacturer, a drive labeled 480gb is often easily over 20gb smaller than one labeled 512gb in true capacity.

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