The Crucial MX500 500GB SSD Review: A Second Look
by Billy Tallis on February 2, 2018 9:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The average data rate of the Crucial MX500 on the Heavy test is barely improved over the MX300 when the test is run on an empty drive, but the full-drive performance is vastly better; the MX500 suffers very little when full. Compared to competing SSDs, the MX500 still isn't the fastest TLC SSD, but this time the Intel 545s is slower while the Samsung 850 EVO is the one that beats the MX500.
With only a few exceptions, the average and 99th percentile latencies of mainstream SATA SSDs are all in the same general range. The Crucial MX300 was one of the outliers with its poor full drive latency, but the MX500 resolves that problem.
Average read and write latency scores from the Crucial MX500 are reasonable for both the full drive and empty drive test scenarios. The MX500 is still not the fastest TLC drive, but it is never very far behind.
The Crucial MX300 had one of the worst 99th percentile read latency scores when full, but the MX500 has much better quality of service—though still marginally worse than other mainstream SATA SSDs. For 99th percentile write latencies, the MX300's full-drive problems weren't as severe as those suffered by competitors like the ADATA SU800, but the MX500 still straightens things out and ends up scoring better than the MLC-based BX300.
Energy usage for the MX500 over the course of the Heavy test has regressed compared to the MX300, but this only brings the MX500 in line with the rest of the mainstream TLC competition. Full-drive energy consumption is slightly higher than the other recent drives.
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KarlKastor - Saturday, February 3, 2018 - link
I would like to see a review of old SSDs (Indlinx Barefoot, first Intel SSDs, Sandforce SSDs, crucial c300, Samsung 830 for example) and how they would compete against today's drives. The test parcours is much more detailed and challenging for the drives. Can older drives pass this test reasonable good enough or is an upgrade to a modern ssd an major improvement, besides of capacity.velanapontinha - Saturday, February 3, 2018 - link
^this^peevee - Monday, February 5, 2018 - link
Most decent SLC SATA drives should be fine, but there were terrible examples like Kingston V-series which were not much better than HDDs to begin with.But I'd like to see the tests too.
Dragonstongue - Thursday, June 21, 2018 - link
am using your charts to compare the previous results of the MX200 vs the "new" MX500, and most of the numbers and data have changed to show the MX200 as "better" than it once was, if properly tested, this should not have been shown as such.IMHO, if a drive at a specific time using a specific set of drivers etc had say a data rate of 217.85 (crucial MX200 500gb) why does this review "change" to show this same drive now being 235 (a gain of around 8%)
numbers should not be becoming "magically better" IMO, unless firmware was changed without notification, or tests were not run properly the first time around or something like that?
it is quite hard to do direct comparisons when your data does not agree with itself ^.^
MX500 is supposed to be "a fair bit quicker" in most things than MX200 or MX300 (around 18% for the 500gb models..20 odd % for the 1tb models) something is not agreeing with itself based on your data/numbers/review, this is troublesome to say the least, so I suppose my question in this regard is, how "factual" is the testing methodology being used, such as latency numbers (where the original data of MX200 read higher numbers in ms than this review does making this review appearing as if the mx200 is that much faster than it was previously (less latency)
and the power consumption was also higher previously whereas in this review it uses "less" power, the heck is up with this?
if one screwed up original testing methodology "I understand" but, if one just changes data willy nilly to suit vendors or make the older or newer stuff appear better than it actually is, screw that noise (we already have plenty enough companies/corps that do that crud daily..like Ngreedia, Apple, Intel, MSFT etc)
Just saying, had my eye on the MX500, my MX100 256gb has been working very well for me last 2.5-3 years or something like that (still at 99% life) MX200 500gb still snappy (though not quite as snappy as the MX100 for some reason and I have never had it "loaded" currently is at 92% life and yet is at least a 9 month newer drive, have not copied.deleted anywhere close to as much as it claims I have which is confusing...MX500 is supposed to have that much more endurance, but, if the MX200 seems to "chew" endurance more than it should, that is not a good thing.
I have taken all the steps I can to reduce writing to the drive (unless needed) have trim on since day 1 etc...
Anyways, compare the "original" MX200 data you reviewed dated may 22, 2015, with this review dated february 2, 2018, quite a difference in appearances from how so so the drive appeared (MX200) vs the way it "now" appears (seems like not quite a poor drive, though it never was crud drive)
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9258/crucial-mx200-...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12263/the-crucial-m...
would say IMO, double check your info (past info) so you are not making silly mistakes if possible (I know no one is perfect by all means, but I highly doubt you keep hundreds of drives on hand so you can test them a year or 2 down the line, most review sites do not, so does this mean pulling numbers out of thin air?)
take care, love your site by all means, lots of good reading ^.^
dpjtpa - Friday, June 14, 2019 - link
This is definitely the option I will be purchasing soon