Crucial M550 Review: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB Models Tested
by Kristian Vättö on March 18, 2014 8:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based—we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we're testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. As some of you have asked, I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we've been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
The relatively poor IO consistency shows up in our Storage Bench 2013 as well. We are looking at about Samsung SSD 840 EVO level performance here (when taking the difference in over-provisioning into account), which is certainly a step up from the M500 but in the end the M550 is just a mediocre performer.
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hojnikb - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
You forgot plextor m5pro xtreme in top tier :)extide - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Oh Yeah, totally forgot about that one :)kyuu - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
The 840 EVO is a damn good performer, and the Seagate 600 gives you a damn good capacity/price ratio (I bought the 240GB for $130 the other week). Otherwise, looks good.jed22281 - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
When it comes to perf. "overall", not all those are absolute top-tier, some of them should be in a upper-mid-tier category.There's only approx. 3 that could truly be considered as absolute top-tier: Extreme II & Ocz 150 are 2 of them.
jay401 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Regarding your price comparison chart on the Final Words page: At the time of publication, the Samsung 840 EVO 256GB drive is listed at $139.99 on Amazon.com and has been for a couple days.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
We are only using NewEgg for comparisons as otherwise it takes ages to do the chart. Besides, the pricing can change on daily basis so it would only be accurate for a short while. The idea is to give a rough idea of pricing -- ultimately every buyer should do their decision based on the current deals.jay401 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Understood. In this case though, Amazon's had it that cheap for about a week now. :)venk90 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
INSANELY GOOD DEAL ON AMAZON !The 512 GB crucial m550 SSD is listed at 169$ !!
Buy it now before the prices are corrected !
dave_the_nerd - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Wow... bought. Worst case, I'll return it, but... damn.venk90 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
I bought 20 !Going to E-Bay all of them or return it worst case !
Greedy me ? Haha !