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Review: Crucial Reviewed by: Antonis Provided by: Crucial Model: Crucial MX300 750GB SSD Firmware version: M0CR011
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If my memory serves me correctly it was
back in July 2015 that Micron and Intel announced their new 3D NAND, and after
that there was radio silence, until a few weeks ago when Micron officially
announced their new MX300 SSD, the first 3D TLC NAND, and as you can imagine
expectations are high. The Crucial MX300 SSD comes with all the features that
we expect to see from a modern SSD, such as AES 256-bit encryption, TCG Opal
2.0, and is also compatible with Microsoft's eDrive, there is also an Acronis key
to make the transition from one drive to another much easier and faster.
Dynamic Write Acceleration that was introduced on the Micron M600 SSD is also
here and the MX300 also has Power Loss Protection. So as you can see the
Crucial MX300 has everything that you might ask for in a drive that comes with
very aggressive pricing. But just in case I forgot to something you can always
visit the official Crucial website, simply by clicking here.
You can visit the micron website to find
out more about their new 3D NAND, just click here.
So let's start this review by taking a look
at the packaging and its contents, before moving on to some testing.
The Crucial MX300 750GB SSD
As always I will start by taking a look at
the package and the contents that are included with the Crucial MX300 750GB SSD.
We'll start with the package.
The front of the box mainly displays the SSD,
and you can also see that this drive is a limited edition with a size of 750GB.
Here is the back of the box. We can see
that the contents are the 2.5” inch SSD, a 2.2mm spacer, and a data migration
software key.
There aren't any changes to the front of
the drive, it follows an identical look with most of the other drives that we
have seen like the M500 SSD.
And
the rear of the Crucial MX300 750GB SSD.
Inside the box there is key for Acronis
True Image HD software, and a link to download it.
Four of the new micron 3D TLC NAND chips are
located on this side of the PCB, a micron LPDDR3 memory, the Marvel
88SS1074-BSW2 with the custom firmware by Crucial, and finally a lot of capcitors
that should provide all the power that is needed to protect your data.
On the other side of the PCB we find
another set of four 384G-bit 32 tier floating gate 3D TLC NAND chips.
A closer look at the Marvel 88SS1074-BSW2
controller.
The new 284G-Bit 3D NAND by micron
Specifications of the Crucial MX300 750GB SSD
In the pictures below we get a more
detailed view of the specifications and the features of the Crucial MX300 750GB
SSD series as they appear on official website.
The Crucial MX300 SSD specifications as
they appear at their website, and as we can see the drive should be able to
achieve sequential read speeds of 530MB/Sec, and sequential write speeds of
510MB/Sec. When it comes to random performance it should be able to reach 92K
read IOPS, and 83K write IOPS, but soon we will find what the Crucial MX300 can
do.
The drive is available on the Crucial
website for 199.99 US Dollars, or 219 euros for those of us that are located in
the EU, as we can see the pricing can be considered very aggressive, although as
always prices will vary.
CrystalDiskInfo
In
the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Crucial MX300 750GB
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: HyperX Savage 4x4GB 2400 @ 2666
- GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
controller - OS SSD: HyperX Fury 240GB
- PSU: Seasonic 750W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 10
The Crucial MX300 750GB 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 14.5.0.1081.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Crucial
MX300 750GB 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 MX300 750GB 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 MX300 750GB SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Crucial MX300 750GB 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 7 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 MX300 750GB SSD
Comparison SDD
Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune
HD
Tune Test – Sequential reading test
The Crucial MX300 750GB SSD isn’t the
fastest drive that I have tested.
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.
ATTO is the test in which almost every SSD
is able to achieve its maximum rated speed, and here the Crucial MX300 SSD is
able to show that it can achieve its rated speed of 510MB/Sec write and also
530MB/Sec read.
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.
In this test the Crucial MX300 SSD gives an
excellent write result, but the read speed is slower than expected.
The two graphs below will give a more
detailed view of how the Crucial MX300 SSD compares with other SSDs that I have
retested.
Here I present the graph for the read speed
tests. You can compare the Crucial MX300 performance with other drives I have
tested.
Finally the results for the Crucial MX300
SSD for write speed, and 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
MX300 750GB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.
The overall result is very good, and could
have been even better if the drive had a little more read speed, but it’s still
the second fastest that I tested.
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 MX300 750GB SSD.
The best result that I have seen so far comes
from the Crucial MX300 SSD, and 265.68 MB/Sec puts the MX300 directly at the
top.
I start by presenting the Adobe After
Effects result and as we can see the Crucial MX300 has the best result.
Nothing really changes here, this time the
Crucial MX300 shares the first spot with the MX100.
This time the Crucial MX300 is almost a
second faster than the second drive, another excellent result.
0.1 seconds faster than the MX100, and that
is how you finish, again, in first place.
No surprises here, the Crucial MX300 SSD
continues to occupy the first place in this chart.
The story continues to be that same with
the Crucial MX300 SSD.
Here we have found the first test that the
Crucial MX300 SSD finished second.
Another 0.1 second lead for the Crucial
MX300 SSD.
9.2 seconds, that is all the time that the
fastest SSD needed, and this is the time that the Crucial MX300 needed too.
The final result doesn't come as a
surprise, and the MX300 SSD is again sharing the top.
Summary:
PC Mark 8 was a test in which the Crucial
MX300 SSD was able to shine, and also deliver some outstanding results for an
SATA SSD.
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 MX300 750GB SSD 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 MX300 750GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
An excellent result for the Crucial MX300
SSD.
Queue depth 4
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Again the Crucial MX300 SSD continues to
show top performance.
Queue depth 32
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
This is the only thing so far where the
Crucial MX300 falls behind.
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.
As shown from the above graph the Crucial
MX300 is right there at the top of the chart.
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 MX300 750GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Read performance is good, but a I would
have liked to have seen a better result.
Queue depth 4
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Again the Crucial MX300 SSD is giving an
impressive performance.
Queue depth 32
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
380.56 MB/Sec gave the Crucial MX300 SSD
second place on the chart.
4K random read queue depth profile.
This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.
The overall performance of the Crucial
MX300 SSD is again at the top of the chart.
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 MX300 750GB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data
One of the best results that I have seen so
far in this test comes from the Crucial MX300 SSD.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test
While the Crucial MX300 SSD was able to
give more that its 530MB/Sec rated speed, it’s not enough to take the drive to a
higher step.
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 MX300 750GB SSD – Workstation simulation
The Crucial MX300 SSD again gives a very
impressive result.
Summary
The Crucial MX300 was able to reach its
maximum advertised speed, and gave results that were slightly higher, 516MB/Sec
read and 535MB/Sec write speed. It was also able to reach 90K read IOPS and 77K
IOPS in the write test. Overall the results are excellent.
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 100μA (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
MX300 750GB – 4K random read QD1
The average power consumption of the
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD is right in the middle of the chart.
When it comes to IOPS per Watt this is a
very good result for the Crucial MX300 SSD.
4K Random Write - queue depth 1
Crucial
MX300 750GB – 4K random write QD1
The result here is simply excellent. The
Crucial MX300 SSD appears to be the most power efficient drive in this test.
The result for the IOPS per Watt also gives
an excellent result.
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 MX300 750GB – 4K random read QD4
The Crucial MX300 SSD continues to occupy
the middle of the chart.
Again the Crucial MX300 SSD shows a result
that is close to excellent.
4K Random Write - queue depth 4
Crucial
MX300 750GB – 4K random write QD4
Yet another excellent result for the
Crucial MX300 SSD.
As expected, the result is again excellent.
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
MX300 750GB – 4K random read QD32
Once again we see that the Crucial MX300
SSD is in the middle of the chart, a very good result.
The story remains the same, as the Crucial
MX300 SSD offers an excellent result when it comes to IOPS per Watt.
4K Random Write - queue depth 32
Crucial
MX300 750GB – 4K random write QD32
No surprises here, as even at higher queue
depths the drive shows that it's power efficient.
This is simply an outstanding result when
it comes to IOPS per Watt.
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
MX300 750GB – Sequential read
A very good result for the Crucial MX30 SSD.
The IOPS per Watt result is very good, but
not close to the top.
512KB Sequential write
Crucial
MX300 750GB – Sequential write
Notice any patterns? The Crucial MX300 SSD
continues to show results that are simply excellent in all the write tests.
Did I said 'excellent'? What I meant to say
was 'awesome'.
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 and with link power
management disabled.
Crucial
MX300 750GB – Drive idle
A very good result for the Crucial MX300
SSD.
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 10, in
real time.
This test is for interest only, and shows
the power requirements of the review SSD booting Windows 10 to the desktop.
Crucial
MX300 750GB – Real time trace of the drive booting Windows 8.1 to the desktop.
Another very good result for the MX300.
Summary
Crucial has managed to make a drive that is
very lean with its power needs. Read results show that those new 3D TLC NAND
are very good, but when it comes to writing they simply excel. It would appear
to be an excellent choice for all those that want a very efficient drive.
Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Crucial MX300 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 MX300 750GB SSD (0 fill)
Results
are ranked by highest total score.
The overall performance of the Crucial
MX300 SSD is very good, but it doesn’t like the 0-Fill test as much as the
HyperX Fury SSD does.
Application profile
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD (application profile)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
The only drives that were able to stay
ahead of the Crucial MX300 SSD are the MX100 and the MX200, again an excellent
result for an SATA SSD, but you have to wonder if the MX300 could have reached a
higher place with a better read/write performance.
100% incompressible
Crucial MX300 750GB SSD (100% incompressible)
Results are based on the highest total score.
Once again the Crucial MX300 SSD stays third
in this chart, with an excellent result.
Summary
I have to admit that I wanted that
something extra from this new 3D TLC NAND, and even though the results were
good for the Crucial MX300 SSD, I still think that there was room for
improvement.
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.
Read write 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.
Excellent write result for the MX300, but
the read result wasn’t close to what I expected.
Read write 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.
Both read and write results are excellent.
Read write 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.
The Crucial MX300 continues to deliver excellent
performance.
Read write tests – ISO (7927MB)
For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron
Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.
Both read and write tests are very close,
the performance of the MX300 SSD is excellent.
Read write 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 we see that the read performance
of the Crucial MX300 is something that will slow the drive.
Windows start-up based on the Boot Racer 5.00
Start-up time
On the next screen shot you can compare the
current tested SSD and compare it to other drives that I have tested. Below I
present the results.
The Crucial MX300 SSD showed an impressive
number, 27.6 seconds to boot.
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 MX300 750GB 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.
The result is good for the Crucial MX300
SSD.
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.
Starting with the fresh install of Windows 10,
and running AS SSD to get an idea of how the Crucial MX300 performs, we can see
that the result is very good, especially since all power saving features are
enabled.
As with most SSDs they don’t like to be
filled with data, and the Crucial MX300 SSD shows a drop in the write speed,
but overall the result is very impressive for a drive that has less than 4GB of
free space.
Once you free up the drive, and in this
case to 50% empty, the performance comes back.
Also after deleting all the extra data that
was on the drive we can see that the performance is identical to the previous
test run that I did.
Write Speed test
At this moment I would like to say that HD
Tune write speed test was the very first test that I run on this drive right
out after I got it out of the box, the file size was set to 4MB.
We can see the that the Crucial MX300 is
able to use 225GB as a SLC cache, and up to that point you have a maximum write
speed of 500MB/Sec, but after that you are dropping down to 250-300MB/Sec. Not
as fast as their MLC drives, but compared to the previous generation of TLC NAND
that micron had to offer this is a big step forward.
This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
The cons:
My only complaint will have to be the read
performance of the Crucial MX300 SSD, as it’s not as high as the previous
drives from the MX series.
The pros:
The pros for the Crucial MX300 SSD are a
lot, I will start with the Crucial Executive Suite, which offer a lot of
flexibility, such as monitoring your SSD's health, firmware updates, and some other
convenient features like manually setting up the OP (over provisioning). The
MX300 has pretty much all the encryption features that you might ask from a
consumer drive, and it also has power loss protection so you won't lose your
data.
Now, the overall experience with the MX300
is mainly positive, power consumption is very good when it comes to read, but
simply outstanding when it comes to write, so the MX300 is a very efficient
SSD. Write speeds were also outstanding, and in the IOMeter tests the drive was
able to reach its full maximum speed of 512MB/Sec and also almost 93K IOPS for random
write.
The real world performance of the drive as
was also trouble free, something that is expected from Crucial, and also the serial
provided for Acronis True Image is another thing that will give more plus points
to the Crucial MX300 SSD.
To sum up, this is what I would say:
The Crucial MX300 750GB limited edition
SSD is an excellent drive. The all new 3D TLC NAND showed that they can deliver
excellent performance with a very aggressive pricing and most importantly higher
capacities.
The Crucial MX300 SSD also performed
excellently for power consumption, and excellent read and write performance. Now
we have to wait to see what else has Crucial to offer in the future, but until that
future arrives, we can enjoy the MX300 SSD.
Therefore, I give the excellent award to
the Crucial MX300 SSD
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark |
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Quarch |
You may comment on this review here, you
can also post your benchmarks in our forum.
