Mushkin Atlas mSATA (240GB & 480GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 16, 2013 1:10 PM ESTPerformance vs. Transfer Size
ATTO is a useful tool for quickly benchmarking performance across various transfer sizes. You can get the complete data set in Bench. The 480GB model is again a bit slower than the 240GB one and write performance especially is noticeably lower. For example at IO size of 4KB, the 240GB model is about 150MB/s faster, which is significant. Even at higher IO sizes the 480GB Atlas isn't able to make up the difference.
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henrybravo - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Perhaps you should go back and read the 2 paragraphs in the power consumption section. They used an mSATA adapter with a voltage regulator, which caused the power consumption numbers to be artificially high. Kristian speculates the true power draw of the drive is actually comparable to the Intel SSD 525.whyso - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
"Hence the numbers for mSATA drives are not accurate because the voltage regulator consumes some of the power." I was assuming they are using the same adapter for all the drives (which they say plural).Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
The same adapter was used with Plextor M5M and MyDigitalSSD's SSDs. I'm currently trying to set it up so that the voltage/current going straight to the drive could be measured. Will update if I get it working...phantom505 - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
Pretty poor reading comprehension. The voltage regulator eats 40-50% of that value. Seems relatively speaking on par.kraki - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
As a long time Mushkin customer who has 3 of the Chronos Deluxe 240s in his desktop even I had to go with the M5Ms as well in my new laptop. I disagree on the "Performance isn't important" comment though. Silent, fast and light were my reasons for getting 2 Plextor M5Ms in my new system.tomtetummetott - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
just curious: is there any reason to buy this over a Crucial M500 mSATA?Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
We haven't tested the M500 mSATA yet (I've asked for samples and they should be here after CES) but my wild guess would be no.asgallant - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Is it possible that the performance deficit for the 480GB is due to using LGA60 for the packaging instead of LBGA100? A priori, one might expect to see bandwidth per package to correlate with pin count, ergo lower performance from lower pin count.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
That's a good point. Some OEMs have changed the package type for better performance, you're probably right that the package type is at least partially reason to the lower performance. However, I think the main reason is still the increased page/block count since the 480GB Vertex 3 showed similar behaviour.Menetlaus - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Screw mSATA... where are the retail NGFF/M.2 SSD's and their reviews?I've got a Lenovo Y410p with a useless 32gb 4280 (I think) M.2 cache SSD... I'd love to drop in a 120/250GB SSD and use it for the OS drive, but there are few (if any) M.2's readivly available in Canada (amazon.COM had two, but no ship to Canada).
Can you tell I'm more than a little ticked at Lenovo as they assured me prior to purchase it had a mSATA SSD, but I suppose this is another case of may the buyer beware.