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Review: Crucial M4 SSD |
Crucial was kind
enough to send me the M4 256GB SSD drive for a review. The Crucial M4 is
designed by and manufactured by Micron Technology and it uses the Micron's 25nm
NAND technology, it also has the latest SATA3 controller from Marvell and it's
available in four different sizes, 64GB/128GB/256GB and 512GB. There are many
SATA3 solid state drives out there that want a place in our desktop PCs, and in
this review I'll be testing the overall performance of the M4. The manufacturer
promises 65,000 IOPS, read speeds up to 415MB/S and write speeds up to 260MB/S
on SATA3.
Company
Information
I’m sure most MyCE
members will be familiar with the Crucial brand name. Crucial has been
manufacturing high performance, high quality PC memory, SSDs, and other PC
related hardware for many years.
If you would like
to find out more about Crucial, you can visit the Crucial website
Packaging
Not much to see on
the box of the Crucial M4, the SSD was a review sample so there wasn't much
inside the box, only the drive and the brochure with all the info that a
reviewer needs. When you decide to purchase the M4 you won't be getting the
package that you see in the picture. Instead you have various different choices
that you can select. Have a look at the next picture to see what M4 SSD
packages are available.
Three options are
available as we can see. Now it's time to take a closer look at the Crucial M4
SSD that was send to us.
Rear side of the Crucial M4 SSD.
Front side.
Front of the box.
Inside the
Crucial M4
Time to see what
is inside the Crucial M4 housing.
Front
Back
On the top of the
PCB we can see the Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 SATA3 controller and eight 25nm NAND's
manufactured by Micron, on the reverse side of the PCB there are eight more
25nm NAND's and the buffer for the drive.
A close look at the
Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 SATA3 controller. The Marvell controller promises a
better performance over the previous controller that was used on the Crucial
C300 SSD. Higher IOPS and read/write speed, as well as better TRIM performance.
Micron's 25nm NAND.
The buffer of the M4 SSD. 128MB
Crucial M4
Specifications
Here are the
specifications of the Crucial M4 as they appear on their website.
Test PC and test
procedures
For this review I will
be using the following hardware and software.
Hardware:
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme4
CPU: Intel 2500K
RAM: 2x4GB DDR3 Kingston
Hard Drive: Western Digital Blue 500Gb (OS)
Hard Drive: OCZ Vertex (Storage)
GFX: Onboard Intel HD3000
Sound: Onboard Realtek HD
PSU: Chieftec GPS-500AB A
Display: Fujitsu Siemens 22" LCD
OS: Windows 7 ultimate (all the updates up to
August 9, 2011)
Software:
To test the
performance of the Crucial M4 256GB SSD, I will be using the following test
applications in this review.
- HD Tune Pro
- ATTO
- Iometer
- AS SSD
Benchmark - CrystalDiskMark
Test procedures
I will start off
our testing procedures explanation by stating that I did not run many basic
benchmarks on the Crucial M4 SSD drive. 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 M4 SSD, and will
complement this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark.
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 60,000 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 60,000 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 60,000 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 60,000 4K IOPS, IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD
can cope with as much as 60,000 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 60,000 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.
A big thanks to
Dee for allowing me to use some of her text to explain the some of the test
procedures.
HD Tune Pro
SATA3
SATA2
I present the graph below for comparison
with other recently tested drives.
ATTO Disk benchmark
SATA3
SATA2
ATTO is the
default program for measuring the performance of every Solid State Drive.
Moving now to the test results we can see that the Crucial M4 is performing
even better than the manufacturer states, the Crucial M4 was able to reach read
speeds close to 460MB/S and write speeds up to 270MB/S on a SATA3 port, the
result is excellent.
CrystalDiskMark
3.01x64
Crystal Disk Mark
will give us an idea of how the drive will perform with uncompressed data.
SATA3
SATA2
Again we have an
impressive result for the Crucial M4 on SATA3.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark
is a tool that was designed to test Solid State Drives by emulating how a PC
works and at the end gives an overall score.
SATA3
SATA2
Impressive
results. The Crucial M4 is very close to the top of our chart, and the only
drive that dares to get close to the OCZ Vertex 3.
AS SSD
compression benchmark
This test creates
test patterns on the target drive which are random and vary in the level of
compression used in the test data. This ranges from 0% compressible to 100%
compressible.
SATA3
SATA2
As we can see the
Crucial M4 is able to reach very high speeds with uncompressed data.
Summary:
So far we can see
that this drive is amongst the fastest SSD's we have tested and it's capable of
reaching read/write speeds of up to 470/260 MB/S. The overall performance is
close to excellent.
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 will
automatically align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation,
Windows XP won’t. It is imperative that an SSD’s partition is aligned. Windows
XP is also restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k
boundaries if it can.
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.
All the IOMeter
tests create a 2GB data set on the target drive, and each test is run for a
duration of 2 minutes.
IOMeter 4K random (outstanding
I/Os = 4, 32) write test.
Our 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.
SATA 3
(Queue depth 4 SATA 3)
(Queue depth 32 SATA 3)
SATA 2
(Queue depth 4 SATA 2)
(Queue depth 32 SATA 2)
IOPS
MB/s
The first
impression is positive, the Crucial M4 SSD is very close to the top.
IOMeter 4K random (outstanding
I/Os = 4, 32) 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.
SATA 3
(Queue depth 4 SATA 3)
(Queue depth 32 SATA 3)
SATA 2
(Queue depth 4 SATA 2)
(Queue depth 32 SATA 2)
IOPS
MB/s
Again the Crucial
M4 SSD is very close to the top, and in some tests is again faster than the OCZ
Vertex 3, but not faster than its predecessor and the C300 still remains the
fastest drive in this test.
IOMeter 512KB (outstanding I/Os =
2) write test.
Sequential writing
performance is also very important; in this test sequential writing performance
is measured.
SATA 3
SATA 2
IOPS
MB/s
Once again the Crucial
M4 SSD is very close to the top and the result is very good.
IOMeter 512KB (outstanding I/Os =
2) read test.
This test measures
512k sequential reading performance.
SATA 3
SATA 2
IOPS
MB/s
Sequential reading
performance is outstanding, the Crucial M4 SSD is the king of this 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).
SATA 3
SATA 2
IOPS
MB/s
The performance in
the workstation test is the only negative we can find. The drive just gets
above the Intel X25-M, and this result was something that we did not expect to
see.
Summary
With the exception
of the workstation test the drive's performance is simply impressive. The
Crucial M4 SSD is close to the SATA 3 limits when reading sequentially and also
amongst the fastest drives when reading and writing small files.
Now let’s head
to the next page where we will look at how the Crucial M4 SSD 256GB SSD
performs using a brand new benchmarking application....
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As well as
performing SSD endurance tests. Anvil’s Storage Utilities is 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 important 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 solid enough
to use in this article, and I have already verified the obtained results using an
SATA analyser.
For this article,
time only permitted running the tests on three SSDs, the Crucial M4 256GB SSD
the Intel 510 series 120GB and the OCZ Vertex 3, but I will of course test any
new SSD review samples that I am able to obtain, and add the test data to the
tables.
Since this is new
benchmark, I will include the screenshots of both SSDs, but in future reviews I
will only include screenshots from the tests obtained on the review drive.
I will be running
four different compression profiles, and they are as follows.
- 0 fill (100%
compressible data) - Database profile
(8% compressed) - Application
profile (46% compressed) - 100% (non
compressible data)
So let’s begin
the tests.
0 fill
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB (0 Fill)
Intel 510 series 120GB (0 fill)
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB (0 fill)
With data that is
100% compressible, we can see that the drive is very close to the OCZ Vertex 3.
Database profile
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB (database profile)
Intel 510 series 120GB SSD (database profile)
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD (database profile)
Again we can see
that the Crucial M4 is close to the OCZ Vertex 3, a very impressive result.
Application profile
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB (Application profile)
Intel 510 series 120GB SSD (application profile)
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD (application profile)
In this test we
can see that the Crucial is again very close to the OCZ Vertex 3 drive, again
the result is very good.
100% incompressible
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB (100% incompressible)
Intel 510 series 120GB SSD (100% incompressible)
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD (100% incompressible)
With data that is
100% incompressible, we see the Crucial M4 being close to the OCZ Vertex 3 and
far away from the 128Gb Intel Drive.
Summary
Overall we can see
that the Crucial M4 SSD is always close to the OCZ Vertex 3, and we can say
that the results that we obtained were very impressive.
Now let's head
to the next page for some real world tests....
Real world copy
tests
It has become
clear recently 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.
Real
world copy tests
I will now conduct
a few real world copy tests. These tests simulate what real people do with
their drives. I will be conducting writing tests, using a large single file and
a multiple file copy of various file sizes. Then I will round off the tests by
copying a folder of MP3 audio files, and also a folder of JPG pictures.
I should point out
that this is not a scientific way of measuring performance. These timings were
taken with a stop watch; we have however ensured that the reading drive is well
able to supply a data stream to our writing drive, which is high enough not to
be slowing down the performance of the writing drive.
I will once again
be comparing the obtained results with our comparison drives, and will present
the results in the form of graphs.
Write a folder of JPG picture
files.
For this test I
copied a folder of JPG picture files from the Crucial M4 SSD to the OCZ Vertex
2 SSD, Western Digital 500GB Blue and also copied the same files to another
location on the Crucial M4 SSD. I also copied the files from the OCZ Vertex 2
SSD to the Crucial M4 SSD, but the result was slightly slower, so I decided to
keep the faster one. The folder contained 3,377 JPG pictures, with a total
capacity of 2.56GB.
The Crucial M4 is
clearly the winner in this test.
Write a folder of MP3 audio
files.
Again I used the
same procedure that was described in the copy pictures test. For this test I
copied a folder of MP3 audio files from the Crucial M4 SSD to the OCZ Vertex 2
SSD, Western Digital 500GB Blue and also copied the same files to another
location on the Crucial M4 SSD. The folder contained 259 MP3 audio files, with
a total capacity of 1.36GB.
Once again the Crucial
M4 is the fastest drive on our test.
Summary
The Crucial M4 SSD
is clearly the fastest drive I have tested so far and one of the fastest that
MyCE has ever tested.
Windows start-up and closedown
For these tests, I
simply used a stop watch and tested the amount of time taken for a full
installation of Windows 7 to boot to the desktop, and then timed how long it
took for Windows 7 to close down by the normal start menu method.
The timing was
started once the BIOS had initialised and reached the “loading OS message”.
Windows 7 boot time
Windows 7 closedown
The Crucial M4 SSD
is clearly the winner, the fastest drive that we have tested, it even manages
to beat the OCZ Vertex 3 by half a second.
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 in the past were quite slow
at installing applications, but this has changed. Most modern SSD's have very
good I/O performance and times are getting closer than ever.
For these tests, I
left the original test that Dee did and on the bottom and added my own test for
the installation of MS Office. The reason I did this was mainly because of
different hardware used, but more importantly, a different version of Microsoft
Office 2007.
We then installed
these applications onto our comparison HDD drives, which were all running
mirror image installations of our Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit installation,
and timed the amount of time taken to install the application with a stopwatch
on each of the drives.
MS Office 2007 Professional (full
install)
MS Office is
another of those applications that make you cringe at the thought of
re-installing it.
Let's find out how
our drives coped with the MS Office 2007 full install.
Now let's see how
the Crucial M4 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 crucial M4
SSD and the Crucial M4 was used as a source drive for the installation of MS Office
2007. I also copied the files to the OCZ Vertex 2 and use that drive to install
to the Crucial M4 and again the installation time wasn't much quicker, so again
I kept the faster time.
As we can see we
can't compare the results with the ones that we previously had, so here is the
chart of the recent tests and the Crucial is the fastest drive.
By the time that I
finished the review Crucial had released a new firmware. So I spent some time
running the some basic tests again. Remember that the disk had over a month of
use and all the software that I use every day, so the results might not look as
good as the earlier tests.
A picture of the change log for the Crucial M4.
I want to take
some time to explain the firmware update process that I believe is one of, if
not the simplest out there. Firstly you need to get the correct file for your
drive, then extract it and burn the ISO file to a CD-R/RW. The firmware can be
found here and also
the instructions for updating your SSD.
After that you
need to go into the BIOS, set your hard drive into IDE mode and select your DVD
drive as the boot device, save changes and boot from your optical drive. The
rest will almost be done automatically for you. Once the SSD is identified all
you need to do is type "yes" for the update to start, and within a
few seconds your SSD will have the latest firmware.
Reboot, go into
BIOS and set the drive again into AHCI mode.
Set it as the boot
device, that's it, you are done.
So now is a good
time to see what the new firmware has to offer. I will be running only three
tests, ATTO, AS SSD Benchmark and CrystalDiskMark. All the tests will be done
from Crucial M4, and the drive has over a month of everyday use.
ATTO
We can see a very
impressive 70MB/Sec improvement in the read speed, and the write speed has
remained the same. Excellent, read speeds up to 530MB/Sec and write speeds up
to 260MB/S for the Crucial M4 SSD with the latest firmware.
AS SSD Benchmark
Again we can see
that the new firmware gives a huge advantage for sequential read speeds.
CrystaDiskMark
Here is the last
result. Again we can see a huge improvement in read speed, and a small loss in write
speed.
Overall, I can say
that Crucial has done an excellent job improving their SSD. The 009 firmware is
giving close to 70MB/Sec faster read speed, depending on the test application. There's
a slight reduction in write speed, but this won't be missed in everyday use.
Summary
Clearly the
Crucial M4 SSD is a very fast drive and with the latest firmware update the
drive is getting even closer to the SATA 3 limits for read speeds. We can see
that the drive has everything that is needed to secure a place in your new
system and in some tests it's the fastest drive that we have ever tested here at
MyCE. Overall the Crucial M4 SSD has impressive performance.
Let’s now move
to the conclusion ...
There is much to
say about the performance of the Crucial M4 SSD, but I will describe it in one
word, outstanding. Great value for money, great performance. Unfortunately
numbers can't entirely demonstrate the true speed of the drive, you have to use
the M4 SSD to feel what Crucial has to offer. The Crucial M4 gave me the same
shock that I got when I first used a Solid State Drive, but this time it was
more terrifying. Outstanding read speeds and most importantly an astonishing multitasking
experience in everyday use. It's simply hard to get close to the drive's limits
in everyday use, and as you have read from the benchmarks this drive is easily
one of the fastest that we have tested.
And speaking about
limits. The Crucial M4 SSD managed to produce the best times we have had so far
for boot and shutdown times, also it is one of the few drives that can come
close to and sometimes better the OCZ Vertex 3 drive, and that's not the
easiest thing to achieve. One more positive that we can point out is the
firmware support. Crucial did an excellent job not only updating the firmware
but also giving the M4 a performance boost close to 70MB/Sec on read speeds.
If you live in Greece
the Crucial M4 SSD 256Gb starts at 360Euros also a quick search on Amazon.co.uk
gives a starting price of £283.31.
As we can see the starting price of the drive is very tempting, and it will be
a huge upgrade from any mechanical hard drive, and even from an elderly SATA2
SSD.
The only thing
that we can find, and count it as negative was the write speed. You can't say
that the drive is slow, but for a SATA 3 drive we believe that the speeds could
have been higher.
Positive
- SATA 6Gbps
- Excellent
read/write performance - Firmware support
appears to be very good - Excellent at
multitasking - 3 Years Warranty
- Low price for a
SATA 6Gbps - Excellent access
times
Negative
- Sequential write
speeds could have been faster.
Conclusion
Finishing the
review of the Crucial M4 SSD we can say that this drive has only given us
positive feedback. "Starting with the out of the box performance and
finishing with the latest firmware update that adds 70MB/S to the read speed.
Also another impressive factor is the low price." We therefore give this
drive the "Outstanding" and "Editor choice" awards.
You may comment on this review below.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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