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Review: Crucial BX200 Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Crucial.eu Model: Crucial BX200 960GB SSD Firmware version: MU01.4
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A few weeks ago Crucial introduced their all new SSD, the Crucial BX200, and not only does this drive replace the BX100 SSD, but it also introduces the new 16nm TLC NAND from micron. The BX200 SSD is a drive that wants to take the place of our existing mechanical drive, or even a smaller SSD, and it promises high read and write speeds, with the usual reliability that we have been used to from Crucial. It should also come with an attractive price tag so if you were holding off and waiting for prices to drop then you'll not have any more excuses preventing you from moving forward, and allowing yourself to enjoy all the benefits that SSDs have to offer.
I am 100% confident that you know the name Crucial, and you are also aware of their products, but in case that you are not familiar with Crucial or you want to find out what new information they have you can visit their website to find out everything, simply by clicking here.
Now let’s move to the more interesting parts, and start this review of the Crucial BX200 by taking a look at the package, and its contents.
The Crucial BX200 960GB SSD
Let’s start by taking a look at the package and the contents included with the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD. We'll start with the package.
The front of the Crucial BX200 SSD, and as we can see there is a small change in the design of the box, but it still remains very clean looking.
Here is the back of the box.
A look at the top side of the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD.
And the rear of the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD.
Inside the box there is a 2.5mm spacer and a serial number for Acronis True Image HD.
Here is the front side of the PCB, we can see the DRAM, the eight NAND chips, and the Silicon Motion controller.
On the other side we find another set of eight NAND chips.
A closer look at the 16nm TLC Micron NAND.
And a closer look at the SM22566 controller.
Specifications of the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD
In the pictures below we get a more detailed view of the specifications and the features of the Crucial BX200 SSD series as they appear on official website.
As we can see the drive is available in three capacities, 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB. Thankfully we no longer have a BX200 SSD that is smaller than 240GB.
CrystalDiskInfo
In the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD.
Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.
Test machine
For this review I will be using a computer with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
- Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4.4GHz
- RAM: RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4x4GB 2400Mhz
- GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio controller
- OS SSD: Kingston V300 240GB
- PSU: Seasonic 750W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 8.1
The Crucial BX200 960GB SSD was connected to first SATA port on the ASUS X99-A motherboard. All power saving features were disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.
The SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Version 13.1.0.1058.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this review.
- HD Tune Pro
- ATTO
- Iometer
- AS SSD Benchmark
- CrystalDiskMark
- Anvil’s Storage Utilities
- PCMark
Test procedures
I will start off our testing procedures explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.
SSD technology has moved so fast in the last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some basic benchmarks for the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD, and will complement this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD performs in the real world.
The reality of SSD performance
While I can easily show you which SSD is technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance is concerned.
A typical use of a small capacity SSD at the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous, however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost impossible to detect.
Let’s look at why this is the case.
Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11 seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?
The fact is, all modern SSDs are only ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential read/write performance.
Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance
IOPS
This is a fairly complex subject, but I will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.
The term IOPS is the amount of input or output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random read output transactions in a one second interval.
Ok, now we have some figures to work with, the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?
This will depend on your usage pattern. If you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.
On the other hand, if the SSD is being used for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of application does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.
So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS for a desktop?
In fact you don’t need this type of performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.
OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?
You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K IOPS surely the rest is wasted?
While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS, IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000 4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before it can move on to the next transaction.
In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.
So how will a desktop user even notice this faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?
Multitasking is a good example. The more tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.
Sequential performance
I have always maintained that sequential performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have changed in the world of SSD reviewing.
To me this was always so obvious for a desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game. Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files, but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using their PCs these days?
Summary
So how does this shape up in the real world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?
In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.
However, you can still have an SSD that is very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the SSDs used in this article were in a clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the tests.
- Both our spinning HDD drives were defragged before the start of each test.
- All SSD and HDD used in this article had their partitions aligned to the Windows 8.1 x64 defaults.
Where I use graphs in this article to display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our readers to see which drive we are reviewing.
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD
Comparison SDD
Now let's head to the next page, where I look at some basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune
HD Tune – Sequential reading test
I present the graph below for comparison with other recently tested drives.
The Crucial BX200 SSD was only able to reach 387.8MB/Sec and as a result it finishes in last place on this chart.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.
Moving on to ATTO we can see that the Crucial BX200 was able to achieve its rated speed.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause problems for a system drive.
Again the Crucial BX200 SSD gave a very good result with sequential data, but when it comes to the 4K test we can see that it falls behind.
The two graphs below will give a more detailed view of how the Crucial BX200 compares with other SSDs that I have retested.
Here I present the graph for the read speed tests. You can compare the Crucial BX200 performance with other drives I have tested.
Finally the results for the Crucial BX200 on write speed, again you can compare it with other drives.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.
AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.
After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing overall.
Now let’s look at the results for the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’ results are presented in the form of a graph.
As we can see the Crucial BX200 was able to stay in the middle of the chart, and give a slightly better result than the drive that it replaces.
Let's head to the next page and run some tests using PCMark 8.....
PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite
We have built quite a close relationship with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available. I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world' benchmarking suite.
I will describe the basic way that each test is carried out, above the graph for each test.
PC Mark 8 HDD suite results
Here is a screenshot displaying the results for the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD.
203.71 MB/Sec is a just an acceptable result. I was hoping for something better from the BX200 SSD.
As we can see from the above graph, the Crucial BX200 isn’t the fastest drive in this test.
57.9 seconds is a good result.
On the other hand, 378.7 seconds is something that isn’t acceptable. The Crucial BX200 is 18 seconds slower than the drive that it replaces.
Once again the Crucial BX200 SSD gives a good result.
Here the BX200 SSD is only 0.3 seconds slower, a very good result.
134.2 seconds, that’s the number that the Crucial BX200 SSD was able to achieve.
Once again the Crucial BX200 isn’t able to give an impressive result, but continues to stay on the acceptable side of things.
I am almost certain that in real life you won't be able to notice the 0.4 second difference between the best drive and the BX200, but numbers tell a different story. And as we can see, the Crucial BX200 is amongst the slowest that I have tested.
9.3 seconds isn’t the best result that I have seen but is still good.
Once more, the Crucial BX200 SSD gave a result of 9.3 seconds and that is just good.
Summary:
The results tell the story, and that story is that the Crucial BX200 SSD isn’t a drive for those that seek maximum performance, however as a replacement drive it would be a very good alternative, and a big step forward in the world of SSDs.
Let's head to the next page for our IOMeter test results.....
I/O Performance
There is little point of having an SSD drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000 I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage in.
The things that I will look at are the total I/O per second and total MB/s.
Partition alignment and sector boundaries
Windows 7 and Vista will automatically align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t. It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it can. The Crucial BX200 960GBSSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.
IOMeter allows us to set the sector boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.
I will provide a screenshot of the tests on the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.
If any of you would like to see a screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.
All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.
IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.
The first test involves creating continual 4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.
Queue depth 1
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random write queue depth profile
For this test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking, the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.
Clearly write speed isn’t the strongest point for the Crucial BX200, as it barely reaches a maximum speed of more than 150MB/Sec.
IOMeter 4K random read test.
If there are many 4k files created, then that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k reading performance.
Queue depth 1
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random read queue depth profile.
This test shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.
Again, the read speed isn’t where I would have expected it to be, as you can see for yourself from the graph above.
IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.
Sequential writing performance is also very important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing performance of the drive.
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data
The Crucial BX200 SSD loves sequential data, and it was able to beat the BX100 by 21MB/sec in this test.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading performance.
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test
A very good result for the Crucial BX200 in this read test.
IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).
When running applications you will find that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files, being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64 (threaded).
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD – Workstation simulation
A speed of 291.59MB/Sec isn’t the best that I have seen but it is still a good result.
Summary
The Crucial BX200 gives a mediocre performance in most of the tests, with the exception of the sequential ones, but this is not enough to push it close to the drive that it replaces. Again it’s an acceptable solution for someone that has a very light workload and wants to have all the benefits of an SSD.
Let's head to the next page for our power consumption test results.....
Power requirements and efficiency
Storage device manufacturers by law must
provide power consumption specifications with their storage device products. Quite often these specifications are quite vague, and rarely, if ever, publish
the power efficiency of their storage devices with regard to how much work a storage device can do for a given amount of energy consumed. In this article we
will disclose with unprecedented precision, the energy efficiency of some popular storage devices.
Myce has now secured a piece of 'state of the art' test equipment, which takes a sample every four micro-seconds, that I will be using to measure the power consumption of consumer grade SSDs and HDDs. I'm so very proud to be able to announce that Myce.wiki, in partnership with Quarch Technology, now aims to bring our readers the most comprehensive, and accurate, power consumption tests ever carried out on consumer grade storage devices, to be found anywhere on the Internet.
Myce’s Power Testing will be carried out using Quarch Technology products. More specifically we are privileged that Quarch has allowed us to use their latest Programmable Power Module (‘PPM’) and we would also like to take this opportunity to give a huge 'thank you' to Quarch for providing this equipment. The PPM is specifically designed for testing low power sleep states on modern SSDs and as such has a remarkably accurate low level current measurement, down to 100mA (micro amps, or millionths of an amp). Please click here for details.
Quarch Technology is a world leader in the supply of testing solutions for the data storage industry and if you would like any further information please visit their website by clicking here.
Let's take a closer look at the Quarch PPM box in a bit more detail.
Quarch Technology PPM
The Quarch Technology PPM is able to provide two power supply rails to the target SSD. A 12V (volt) rail is required for PCIe based SSDs, and also for SATA HDDs, SATA HDDs also require the 5V rail to function. All the power requirements of a SATA SSD are handled by the 5V rail. The Quarch Technology PPM can switch between 5V and 3.3V on the secondary power output channel as required. So for SATA based SSDs it is set to 5V, and for PCIe based SSDs, it is set to 3.3V.
On the right of the Quarch PPM, you can see the socket where the main power injection lead connects.
On the rear of the box (not shown) you will find a USB 2 socket, a power socket (to supply power to the unit) and a Torridon connection interface, for connecting to external equipment.
My setup.
Although the Quarch Technology PPM can be used on a single PC, which can act both as host and measurement system, I will be using two PCs to run the tests. One PC will handle the measurements, and the second PC will act both as a host for the target SSD, and will also be used to load the target SSD with data. This will allow me to do some pretty fancy power consumption tests.
I will first show the type of workload being used to load the SSD during the power consumption test. I will then present the power consumption graph, and power consumption statistics of the SSD.
I will display the results in the form of bar graphs, at the end of each test carried out in this article, so one can compare the results obtained on all the SSDs featured in this article.
I will use the following IOMeter test patterns to load the SSD or HDD.
- 4K random read and write at a queue depth of 1 (to emulate a lightweight consumer workload).
- 4K random read and write at a queue depth of 4 (to emulate a medium workload).
- 4K random read and write at a queue depth of 32 (to emulate a heavy workload).
- 512K sequential read (to emulate reading a sequential file from the storage device).
- 512K sequential write (to emulate writing a sequential file to the storage device).
Power requirements for a lightweight consumer workload - 4K random read and write QD1
A typical lightweight consumer workload will generally be at very low queue depths. Typically at a queue depth of one or less. I'm testing random data at a block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is generally accepted as the most frequently occurring in the consumer environment.
I will show the chart generated by the Quarch PPM for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested SSDs.
There will actually be two bar graphs for each test. The first graph will show the average power consumption during the test run. The second graph, which is much more important, will indicate the power efficiency of the storage device, showing how much work the storage device can do for each Watt of energy it consumes.
4K Random Read - queue depth 1
Crucial BX200 960GB – 4K random read QD1
It looks like the BX200 requires more power than the drive that it replaces.
The read results when it comes IOPS per Watt are acceptable, especially for a TLC SSD.
4K Random Write - queue depth 1
Crucial BX200 960GB – 4K random write QD1
The same thing happens when the drive is writing data, the BX200 is more power hungry.
Well, the performance of the Crucial BX200 is not anywhere near to what I would have liked to have seen from the BX200 SSD.
Power requirements for a medium weight consumer workload - 4K random read and write QD4
A typical medium weight consumer workload will generally be at a queue depth of four or lower. This workload would typically involve some multitasking, with perhaps two or three applications running, and processing data simultaneously. I'm testing random data at a block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is generally accepted as the most frequently occurring in the consumer environment.
I will show the charts generated by the Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested SSDs.
4K Random Read - queue depth 4
Crucial BX200 960GB – 4K random read QD4
Here again we can see that the BX200 consumes more power that the BX100.
Not much to say, as the graph says it all. The BX200 is still behind the BX100.
4K Random Write - queue depth 4
Crucial BX200 960GB – 4K random write QD4
Continuing the write tests and again the Crucial BX200 shows that it needs more power compared to the BX100.
Again the Crucial BX200 is behind the drive that it replaces, It requires more power and delivers less IOPS.
Power requirements for a heavyweight consumer workload - 4K random read and write QD32
Whilst this workload is unlikely arise for the casual consumer PC user, it could well appear in a semi-professional consumer environment, such as in a graphics workstation. This workload would usually involve heavy multitasking, and having several processes running concurrently that require constant access to small files located on the storage device for input or output.
I'm testing random data at a block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is generally accepted as the most frequently occurring in the consumer environment.
I will show the chart generated by the Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested SSDs.
4K Random Read - queue depth 32
Crucial BX200 960GB – 4K random read QD32
In this test we can clearly see a big difference in the power requirements for the two tested drives. As we can see the BX200 wants 1038mW more.
No surprises here, again the new TLC based SSD is behind the older MLC SSD.
4K Random Write - queue depth 32
Crucial BX200 960GB – 4K random write QD32
And again the Crucial BX200 needs 1155 mW more than the drive that it replaces.
Here we can see that the difference between the two drives is huge, and in favour of the BX100 SSD.
Power requirements of a storage device when reading and writing sequential data
Not all of a consumer workload is based around the reading and writing of small random files. Many files are sequential in nature, and can vary in size from a few Kilobytes to several Gigabytes, so your storage device will spend a lot of time reading and writing sequential data.
I'm testing sequential data at a block size of 512 Kilobytes.
512KB Sequential read
Crucial BX200 960GB – Sequential read
No surprises here, the newer drive continues to require more power to complete the same task.
Again the Crucial BX200 SSD is behind the drive that it replaces.
512KB Sequential write
Crucial BX200 960GB – Sequential write
This is the first time that the Crucial BX200 is able to stay ahead of the BX100, a nice result.
When it comes to IOPS per Watt, the Crucial BX200 is faster than the drive that it replaces.
Power requirements of storage devices when they are idle and doing no work at all
The practical reality relating to power consumption is that it can be quite erratic and sometimes unpredictable. Some of us will invest in the most powerful PC we can afford, only to find that the PC can spend quite a lot of time running and doing absolutely nothing. Storage devices are no different.
Often we can be sitting idly pondering what to do next, or perhaps browsing the Internet. When we arrive at a page that interests us, we will read it, and that can take a fair amount of time to complete. During this period the storage device will most likely be idle, but still consuming energy.
In this test, I'm measuring how much energy the storage device consumes when doing no work at all.
Crucial BX200 960GB – Drive idle
As we can see the BX200 SSD is a little more power hungry even when it’s idle.
I will now show one more test, and this should be regarded as for information purposes only.
Power requirement trace of an SSD booting Windows 8.1, in real time.
This test is for interest only, and shows the power requirements of the review SSD booting Windows 8.1 to the desktop.
Crucial BX200 960GB – Real time trace of the drive booting Windows 8.1 to the desktop.
As we can see the crucial BX200 SSD requires more power, to boot into windows.
Summary
We can clearly see that the Crucial BX200 SSD requires more power than the drive that it replaces, and it also falls behind on the IOPS per Watt graph. I admit that I would have liked to have seen a smaller gap between the two drives, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. We also have to remember that the BX200 is the first drive that Crucial has with their new TLC NAND, and TLC NAND also requires more accurate error correction so this has an effect on the overall power consumption.
This doesn’t change the fact that the drive isn’t as power efficient as the BX100, although let’s hope that there is room to tweak the firmware of the BX200 to improve some aspects of the drive.
Now let’s head to the next page where we will look at how the Crucial BX200 SSD performs using Anvil's Storage utilities....
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As well as performing SSD endurance tests. Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly than this, all using real test data.
Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real application data being read and written to the SSD.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA analyser.
I will include a screenshot of the review drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.
I will also be testing three different compression profiles, which are as follows.
- 0 fill (100% compressible data)
- Application simulation profile (46% compressed)
- 100% (non compressible data)
So let’s begin the tests.
0 fill
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (0 fill)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
The result isn’t the best, and as you can see the Crucial BX200 SSD, with its TLC NAND, manages to finish last.
Application profile
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (application profile)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
Not surprisingly, the Crucial BX200 SSD was unable to give the result that I would have liked to have seen, and unfortunately it was the slowest drive that I have tested.
100% incompressible
Crucial BX200 960GB SSD (100% incompressible)
Results are based on the highest total score.
Again the performance of the Crucial BX200 SSD is nowhere near to where I would like it to be.
Summary
The Crucial BX200 is the slowest SSD that I have tested, and comparing it with the BX100 we can clearly see the difference between the TLC NAND and the MLC NAND that this drive has.
Now let's head to the next page for some real world tests....
It has become clear that simply conducting endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work "out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.
Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very little about how the drive will perform in the real world.
If you intend to use your SSD as your primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was time to move into a different method of testing.
From now on I will only use the log files from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.
Real world copy tests
I will now conduct some real world copy tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by installing MS Office 2007.
As I said earlier from now on all my test files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests, and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the files.
Before I move on to the test, I want to give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.
As we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.
Copy tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)
I will start this set of tests by copying 259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to the RAM disk.
Both results are very good, a nice surprise from the Crucial BX200.
Copy tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)
Continuing my set of tests, but this time I will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the currently testing SSD and vice versa.
Again, and this time with various small files, the Crucial BX200 gave a very good performance.
Copy Tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)
Copying a movie is very common task for all of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.
For a value drive the Crucial BX200 is right in the middle of the chart, which is a very good result for this drive.
Copy Tests – Small files (533MB)
I have decided to adapt the very small files test that I am using as part of my USB3 flash tests, so this time I will be also copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD, and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.
Once again the result is great, and the performance of the Crucial BX200 in this test is very good.
Copy Tests – ISO (7927MB)
For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.
In the final test the Crucial BX200 is again in the middle of the chart, and again it's a very good result.
Windows start-up and closedown based on the Event Viewer Logs
Start-up & Shutdown time
The next two screen shots were taken after I'd installed all the drivers and software that I use every day. Below are the results.
A very impressive result for the Crucial BX200 SSD.
Shutdown times are also very impressive.
You can see some previous results here that are based on my old system when I was using a Z77 ASRock extreme4 and an Intel 2500K with 16GB of DDR3 RAM.
Installing applications
Installing applications is possibly something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk, then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications, most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.
For these tests, we picked some popular applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk. We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not hamper the performance of the target drive.
We then installed these applications onto our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.
MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)
Now let’s see how the Crucial BX200 SSD performs with the installation of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.
The procedure followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.
I am leaving the previous graphs as reference points.
The result that I got is simply very good, 101 seconds to install Office 2007.
Speed degradation after heavy testing
On this page I will measure how the SSD performs after heavy testing and usage.
I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark. The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the drive performs.
In this picture you can see the test files that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.
In the picture below you will find all the applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft Office 2007.
Now let’s start our tests.
Let’s start this test and run the AS SSD benchmark on the Crucial BX200SSD when the OS was just installed and see what result I’ll get.
Here I'm filling the drive with data and leaving only four GB free to see the performance, and whilst the result is again acceptable, we can see that the drop in the write speed is very big. Plus in some cases when I was copying various files the drive managed to reach a write speed of 80MB/Sec. I am sure that a couple of runs of AS SSD and I would have got that result, but not many people will be putting this sort of load on their Crucial BX200.
Removing a lot of data and leaving half of the drive empty, and the result improves. Again not the best result but for a daily drive this is a good result.
Finally, after removing all the unnecessary files, the results are very close to what I got when I first ran AS SSD.
Now let’s move on the next page where I will put some extra tests....
Real World Tests, part two
On this page I will mainly focus on the software and some extra tests that I have run on the Crucial BX200 960GB SSD.
Storage executive suite
As expected this is the software that Crucial provides so that you can have full control of our SSD and a much more detailed view of the drive's health. You can download the latest version here, and it’s available for the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows.
The Storage Executive suite will check the health of your hard drive, allow you to check for the latest firmware, allow you to look and monitor S.M.A.R.T., and also give you some more advanced features like Secure erasing your SSD, if that is necessary. I will be only focusing on two parts of the Storage Executive suite, and I will start with the Momentum Cache. This function will allow you to increase the overall performance of your SSD, but it will use a proportion of your RAM.
Momentum Cache
Simply click on the blue icon that says Enable Momentum Cache, and you will be asked to reboot our PC so that the changes can take effect. After that you will be using certain parts of your system RAM to increase the performance of your SSD.
Here is a quick test that I ran using ATTO.
Over-Provisioning
Here we are testing something that I feel is very important and something that I use on my all my SSDs, and this is Over-Provisioning. I am sure that many of our readers have already read the article that we published back in April 2013, but if you haven’t read it you can find it here.
As I said, I always leave some free unallocated space on my SSDs, and depending on the size of the drive this usually is somewhere from 5GB up to 20GB. This
has to be done during the installation of Windows or later through Windows Dsik Management, however most people don’t touch this, either because they might be afraid or because they don’t have the knowledge to do so.
Here is where things get very exciting. Crucial through the Storage Executive suite allows you to change this setting, and the whole process is very simple, as you can see from the picture below.
As we can see the Storage Executive suite allows us to adjust the Over-Provisioning from 1% up to 50% of the total capacity of the drive. I am sure that very few will want so set it to something extreme like 50%, but usually 1-5% should be a very good setting. The nice thing is that when you put the number in the box the software will let you know how much space you will be sacrificing, in my case is 17.89GB, so now all I have to do is click on the Set OP button.
As long as you want to allocate this space for Over-Provisioning all you have to do is click on the Set Over-Provisioning button, if not you can always click on Cancel.
After a few seconds this is what you will see, and you now have 17.89GB allocated so that your SSD controller can use. But if you are limited for space you can always clear that Over-Provisioning and use the extra 17.89GB for storage.
Write Speed
During the real world tests I noticed that the drive was sometimes reaching very low speeds, from 80MB/Sec to 60MB/sec. Below is a screen-shot that I took during the copying of various files from one folder to another, on the same disk.
I therefore decided to also run the HD Tune application write test, and below is the result.
As we can see the write speed of the Crucial BX200 is able to stay close to 360MB/Sec for the first 150GB, after that it stays somewhere close to 60-70MB/Sec, clearly showing that this drive isn’t aimed to those that want to frequently write data to their SSD.
However for daily tasks, that aren’t very write intensive, the Crucial BX200 has very good performance, and is still very fast compared to any laptop hard drive.
This concludes our review. To read the final thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
The Negatives:
There is only one thing that the Crucial BX200 is a lacking, and this is write performance. I am not talking about the synthetic benchmarks but the real world tests, and I was surprised by how easy it was for me to push the drive to its limits. I hope that this can be fixed with a firmware upgrade.
The positives:
I will start by saying that we want see a 128GB BX200 SSD, so thank you Crucial for that. Now let’s move onto more important things, first of all the drive had very consistent read performance, not only in synthetic benchmarks but also in the real world tests. There is also a free copy of Acronis True Image, something that it welcomed. The price of the BX200 SSD is very attractive as well, but I expect that prices will soon drop, as has happened in the past, so this drive will be an even better option for an upgrade. The endurance of 72TB is also very impressive, and as always the Crucial BX200 SSD comes with three years warranty.
I have spent a few weeks with this drive, mainly doing daily tasks from writing reviews, to watching videos, playing games, and converting audio and video
files, and I have to say that in all the time that I have used the Crucial BX200 SSD it felt very good. From a simple daily users perspective the Crucial
BX200 is a good option to take bring you into the world of Solid State Drives, and it should come at a very good price. If you don't have a light workload then
you need to look for the BX100 or the MX200.
To sum up, this is what I would say:
The Crucial BX200 SSD is the drive that introduces the Micron 16nm TLC NAND, and as a first generation product it has its limitations. But for those that look for an inexpensive SSD, to boost their read performance on light workloads, won't be disappointed as long as they'll have known what they bought and what it can do.
I am going to give the Crucial BX200 SSD the “Good” rating.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark |
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Quarch |
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