The Crucial MX300 750GB SSD Review: Micron's 3D NAND Arrives
by Billy Tallis on June 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The average data rate for the MX300 is between the scores of the 1TB and 500GB MX200 but a little closer to the latter. This is acceptable performance but not really an upgrade over the MX200.
The average service time of the MX300 is slow enough to put it among the budget planar TLC drives and well behind the SanDisk X400.
The MX300 has a higher frequency of both moderate and severe latency outliers than the MX200, but it isn't a huge discrepancy. The performance relative to the SanDisk X400 shows that there is room for improvement.
The MX300's power consumption comes in a distant second place behind the BX100, but this is still remarkable efficiency for a TLC drive.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
85 Comments
View All Comments
Gondalf - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
Good point. The real story the have not even read the article, or maybe there is a lot of marketing guys at work here.After all Samsung has shipped for two years 3D SSD drivers in nearly money loss cause the low yields of their manufacturing process on a 3D structure.
icrf - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
What is the expected performance of the 3D MLC NVMe SSD, or is that too many variables different to tell from here? I'm curious if the charge trap/floating gate decision affected performance.jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
I'm taking it that Crucial have given up on SSD R&D? After all each Crucial SSD post BX100 (what a great SSD) just gets slower than the previous.JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
If Crucial has "given up" then what does that speak for Toshiba and other manufacturers that STILL haven't done 3D stacked MLC NAND?Samsung led the innovation 2 years ago and now their first competitor just showed up.
vladx - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
Sandisk X400 seems to be the king of budget SSDs, paying 80USD more for 850 EVO is definitely not worth it imo.Meteor2 - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
Can't dispute that.Lolimaster - Saturday, June 18, 2016 - link
They're not.Unless you move tons of data per day with more than 1 pci-e nvme drive there's no difference between sata and pcie ssd's. PCie ssd uses more power and produces more heat.
Communism - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
With the advent of PCIE 3.0 X4 NAND drives a while ago, the whole SATAIII segment of SSDs are essentially obsolete. The lack of significant competition in the PCIE3.0 X4 NAND drives bringing down prices quickly is disconcerting.The only COGS difference between PCIE3.0 X4 NAND drives and SATAIII drives is the controller, which doesn't actually cost much at all.
Buying into SATAIII SSDs at this point in time simply is a bad idea comparatively.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
Sara is hardly obsolete. Pcie m2 drives still only hit 512gb vs the 2tb sata drives, still run hotter, and don't offer much but a faster boot time. Day to day performance between sata and pice is nil unless you are moving hundreds of gigs of data per day onto/off of the drive.Until m.2 is cheaper, cooler, and the same capacity as sata, sata isn't going anywhere.
vladx - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
Actually, NVMe drives boot slower because of additional drivers needed to be loaded.