Crucial MX200 (250GB, 500GB & 1TB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on May 22, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Crucial
- MX200
- Micron 16nm
AnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer has been an essential part of our SSD test suite for nearly two years now. It was crafted to provide a benchmark for very IO intensive workloads, which is where you most often notice the difference between drives. It's not necessarily the most relevant test to an average user, but for anyone with a heavier IO workload The Destroyer should do a good job at characterizing performance. For full details of this test, please refer to this article.
Despite the improved IO consistency, the MX200 doesn't have any advantage over the MX100 in our heaviest The Destroyer trace. The MX200 is clearly not crafted for intensive IO workloads because there are far better drives available, which is a shame because I've been waiting for Crucial to deliver a true high-end drive, but the MX200 clearly isn't that. What's alarming is the fact that the BX100 is actually faster than the MX200, which doesn't speak too highly of Crucial-Micron's custom firmware for the Marvell controller.
Average latency doesn't really change the story as the MX200 is still a relatively slow drive by today's high-end SSD standards. Especially the performance of the 250GB is surprisingly bad and it looks like Crucial's SLC cache implementation isn't optimal for intensive IO workloads.
The share of high latency IOs is also pretty bad, although fortunately even the 250GB model manages to keep +100ms IOs within a reasonable limit.
The power consumption is quite average, but the BX100 is without a doubt far more power efficient even for high intensity IO workloads despite its position as a value drive.
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jonovw - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
When I got mine, the MX200 was pretty reasonably priced compared to it's competition for a M.2 SATA drive.MrMilli - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
"Another thing I'm not very satisfied with is the Dynamic Write Acceleration. I don't think an SLC cache is very useful in an MLC based drive because the performance benefits are marginal, at least with SATA 6Gbps."Sandisk showed with the Ultra II that SLC caching doesn't have to mean terrible latency if implemented correctly.
As a cheap drive, the ARC 100 is looking better every day. For typical desktop workloads, it 'feels' the fastest thanks to it's low latency. I don't understand why it's not recommended more often.
MrSpadge - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
I looks like Crucial should really tune their algorithm. Very short bursty writes, which still fit into the DRAM cache, can easily be written in MLC mode. There's enough time for time. Longer bursts could / should be written as SLC, if enough drive space is available. Otherwise MLC mode would be better, if it's likely the data would have to be reorganized soon anyway. Which also happens under long sustained writes, where there's a point where the drive should switch from SLC to MLC mode.Johnny Five - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
Well, going back to when SSD's were becoming all the rage and OCZ was having all their problems with their controllers, etc.... Crucial was one of the most consistently reliable and dependable SSD's in the market....... I have consistently used my 4 m4 series 128 GB SSD's for nearly 5 years without not 1 single problem, and have used (2) m550's or several years with no problems........reliability is what makes me keep returning to a certain vendor,, be it motherboard, memory, videocard, HDD, etc....so far my MX200 250 GB SSD is working just as great as my old C300 or m4's are doing.... lets hope that this MX200 lasts at least 3 to 4 years with no problems.... something I can not say for SSD's made by OCZ, Intel, Samsung, or HD's like Western digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Maxtor.......... ( am hoping that Western Digital HD's get better now that they bought out Hitachi........ I have over 18 hitachi Hard Drives ranging from 14 yrs old to 2 yrs old, and have yet to have one brick on me, like most every other brand has...... )
regarding TRIM and SSD degrading performance.......... after 5 years +/- continuous use of my Crucial m4 series SSD's ...... running test via AIDA64 Extreme Edition software, I am still running around 98.7 + % performance level, hopefully this MX200 will run just as good....
Impulses - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
Crucial's had it's rash of firmware issues like anybody else...fokka - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
i didn't expect the bx100 to stay that competitive, i guess it's the drive to get right now, especially in a mobile setup where power draw matters.Harry Lloyd - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
I want a 512 GB drive with MX100/200 performance for about 100 $. Possible next year (3D NAND or something)?Ramon Zarat - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
I'm glad my 2 X Crucial M4 128GB in RAID0 are *STILL* king in 99.999% of my desktop scenarios. over 3 1/2 years now, and not as single issue. Still pumping ~900MB/s in sequential read, even at 75% full! Diskinfo reports them at 97% good. At this rate, they will last me well over 50 years before reaching 50% degradation!hrrmph - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
It's good to see AT posting critical reviews (where deserved) again.It's also good to see innovative thinking again, such as the call for the industry to benchmark SSDs at lower queue depths. I would like to read more on the low queue depth issues and which client machines / users are able to push above 1 or 2 QD (if any) and under what circumstances.
philipma1957 - Sunday, May 24, 2015 - link
It would be nice if either crucial or samsung would make larger ssd's in a 2.5 inch form factor.a 1.5tb or 2tb ssd gives me an all ssd system while a 1tb ssd gives me the need for a second drive.
Instead of the little tweaks here and there. Like this one (MX200) which seems to me a fail gives us the size increase. How many years since the first 1tb ssd from crucial (listed 960gb)