The Crucial MX300 750GB SSD Review: Micron's 3D NAND Arrives

Sequential Read Performance

The sequential read test requests 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.

The earlier MX series drives had somewhat poor sequential read speeds, though the spread from best to worst is quite small. The MX300 brings things up to average.

The MX300 is still quite efficient, but the SX930 and BX100 500GB both beat it by a wide margin.

Crucial MX300 750GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 1TBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial BX200 960GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 1TBCrucial MX200 500GBCrucial MX300 750GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 960GBSanDisk X400 1TB

With a higher starting point, the MX300's performance scaling is not as pronounced as the MX200's. The MX300 is a little bit slower at higher queue depths.

Sequential Write Performance

The sequential write test writes 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.

Sequential write speeds on the MX300 are much slower than the MX200 or any other MLC drive, but it does manage to come out ahead of all the planar TLC drives.

Power efficiency is still great by planar TLC standards, but the Samsung 850 EVO managed to saturate the SATA connection while using the same amount of power.

Crucial MX300 750GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 1TBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial BX200 960GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 1TBCrucial MX200 500GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 960GBSanDisk X400 1TB

The MX300 shows essentially no scaling with queue depth. For this test we usually don't see much scaling as caching large writes allows for full performance even at low queue depths, but full performance for the MX300 is still disappointing.