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Review: Micron
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Micron’s M600 is their newest SSD however
this drive is aimed to OEMs and not consumers. That doesn’t take a away the
fact that it comes with some very interesting new technology that I hope will
find its way to the next generation of Crucial SSDs. The M600 comes in 128GB,
256GB, 512GB, and also in 1TB capacities, however these drives will be also
available in 2.5” 7mm, mSATA, and also M.2, so it’s clear that form factor and
size isn’t an issue for the M600. The M600 comes with 16nm NAND, and also
supports DEVSLP that will extend the life of you battery, Opal 2.0
self-encryption, thermal throttling, RAIN, Micron’s new feature Dynamic Write
Acceleration, and also write endurance has been improved, 100TB for the 128GB
drive.
If for some reason you aren’t familiar with Micron you can visit
their website to find out more about their history, their products, innovations,
and a lot more, simply by clicking here.
There is an excellent document that
explains how this technology works, which you can get here,
but to put it in a few words and as simply as possible, Dynamic Write
Acceleration can use any block on the M600 to enable high speed SLC mode to
give a massive improvement in write speed. This feature has to be enabled in
the firmware and it’s mainly beneficial to smaller drives.
During this review we will be able to see
how this technology works. For now though, let’s take a look at the general specifications
of the Micron M600 SSD.
Now let’s take a look at the actual Drive
Micron M600 128GB SSD
As always I will first be examining the
packaging and its contents, but in the case of the Micron M600 the drive only
comes in an antistatic bag, and that is pretty much what any OEM needs.
The top side of the Micron M600 SSD has
only a simple sticker with all the basic information that is needed.
The underside of the Micron M600.
Now let’s look at what’s inside the SSD.
Looking
at the top of the Micron M600 SSD we find eight NAND chips.
On
the back of the M600 SSD we find the Marvel controller, the RAM chip, and eight
16nm NAND chips.
A
closer look at the NAND,
and the
Marvel 88SS9189 controller.
Specifications of the M600 128GB
In the picture below we can see a more
detailed view of the performance of the M600, and in this case the numbers that
the 128GB should give.
CrystalDiskInfo
In
the above screenshot we see all the available info for the Micron M600 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: AsRock Z77 Extreme 4 (Intel Z68
chipset) - Processor: Intel 2nd generation
Core i5 2500K - RAM: 2x4GB Kingston DDR3
- GFX: Onboard Intel HD 3000
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
controller - Hard disk OS: Corsair Nova 64GB
- PSU: Corsair CX430 430W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit with
Service Pack 1
The Micron M600 128GB SSD was connected to the
Intel native SATA 6Gbps (port 1) on the Z77 motherboard of our review PC and
all tests on the drive were carried out with the drive connected to this port.
All power saving features were disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.
AHCI mode was also selected for all drives
in the UEFI of our test PC, and all the tests were carried out in this mode. As
we can also see the formatted size of the Micron M600 SSD is 119GB.
The SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review
PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Version 11.7.0.1013.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Micron M600
128GB 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 Micron
M600 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 Micron M600 SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Micron M600 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.
Micron M600 128GB 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.
Micron M600 SSD is slightly faster than the
Crucial
MX100, overall it’s a nice result to start my tests.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDD and SSD. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.
ATTO was able to extract the maximum out of
the Micron M600 SSD especially when it comes to write speed.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a
problem on a system drive.
Once again we see that the Micron M600 was
able to give a very impressive result in the sequential test. Reading speed is
also very high, and once again the M600 SSD gave an impressive result.
Below I am posting two graphs that give a
more detailed view of the differences between the Micron M600 SSD and the other
SSDs that I have tested so far.
Here
I present the graphs for the read speed tests. You can compare the Micron M600
SSD with other drives.
I
continue by presenting the graphs for the write speed tests. You can compare
the Micron M600 SSD with other drives.
It’s clear that the Micron M600 128GB is a
very impressive drive for its size, and the results can verify that.
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 Micron
M600 128GB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.
Simply Impressive, especially for a
128GB SSD.
Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark 8.....
PCMark Vantage - HDD Suite
For these tests we will be using FutureMark’s
PCMark Vantage. This suite of real world test applications is highly regarded,
as one of the most comprehensive ways of testing a computer’s performance in
the real world. The PCMark Vantage test application also includes an
HDD/SSD/USB Flash suite of testing procedures, designed to fully test the
performance of an HDD/SSD to its limits.
PCMark Vantage HDD suite results
Here
I present the results for the Micron M600 128GB SSD.
Here is a more detailed view of the
performance of the Micron M600 128GB SSD, and you can compare the result with
other drives that I have tested.
Here is the score that the Micron M600
128GB SSD achieved in this test. Once again the result is excellent for a 128GB
SSD.
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 of the Micron M600 128GB SSD result.
284.83MB/Sec from a 128GB can only be
described as an excellent result.
The Micron
M600 SSD is the second fastest drive in this test.
The
result for this test is again very good.
Only
1.2 Seconds the difference between the fastest drive and the M600.
Again
the M600 continues to give an impressive result.
The
M600 continues to show its speed.
One
of the fastest drives that I have tested, that’s the M600 SSD.
0.1
seconds is the difference from the top results.
Once
again the M600 is amongst the top drives that I have tested.
Another
excellent result for the Micron M600.
Summary:
The results are simply impressive, the
Micron M600 SSD that I am testing is the smallest drive available but it has
excellent performance.
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 Micron M600 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
Micron M600 128GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Micron M600 128GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Micron M600 128GB 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.
The Micron M600 SSD is not a showing the
performance that I would like to expect, overall it’s a simply acceptable
result.
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
Micron M600 128GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Micron M600 128GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Micron M600 128GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random read queue depth profile.
This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.
Here is a more detailed view of the performance
of the Micron M600 SSD at different Queue Depths.
IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.
Sequential writing performance is also very
important; in this test sequential writing performance is measured.
Micron M600 128GB SSD 512K Sequential write with repeating data
Again write speed in IOMeter isn't as high
as I would have liked to have seen.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.
Micron M600 128GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test
The Micron M600 SSD is at the top of the
chart when it comes to sequential data, an excellent result.
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).
Micron M600 128GB SSD – Workstation simulation
Again the write speed is very low,
something that it wasn’t expected.
Summary
The Micron M600 SSD is a very impressive
SSD, especially when it comes to read speeds, but the write speeds are not
close to where I would like them to be.
Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Micron M600 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
Micron M600 128GB SSD (0 fill)
Results
are ranked by highest total score.
The Micron M600 gives a very impressive
result, it has no problem staying at the top of the chart.
Application profile
Micron M600 128GB SSD (application profile)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
Again the M600 is staying at the top end of
the chart, I’ll say that again it's a very impressive result.
100% incompressible
Micron M600 128GB SSD (100% incompressible)
Results are based on the highest total score.
The Micron M600 in spite of its small size is
able to give a very impressive result.
Summary
You can only be excited with the Micron
M600 SSD and the results that it was able to produce in this set of tests.
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, the Micron M600 SSD
gave a very impressive result, only 3.52 seconds.
Copy tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)
Continuing my set of tests, and this time I
will be copying 3.377 picture files that are stored in the RAM disk to the Micron
M600 SSD. Less than 11 seconds to copy 2.54GB of data is again a very good
result.
Copy Tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)
Copying a movie is very common task, in
this test there are two files, an MKV and an SRT file to be copied to the Micron
M600 SSD. The M600 again delivers a very impressive performance.
WinRAR – Compressing and extracting a full DVD
For this test, I copied the contents of the
'Iron Man' movie to the hard drive, then used WinRAR to compress the movie, and
also to decompress it. In WinRAR I used the store setting. Now let's see how
the tested SSD performs.
The Micron M600 was not the fastest drive,
but the result is still very good.
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.
The
best result so far for the Micron M600 SSD.
Used
state shutdown, again measured in milliseconds.
The Micron M600 manages an average
performance when it comes to start up and shutdown times, but this is something
that will change, most time for the worst, and something even the fastest drive
that I have tested will also suffer from.
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 Micron M600 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.
148 seconds is not the fastest result,
however you will only have to wait that long only once, and as we can see the
Micron M600 SSD is in the middle of the chart again.
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 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.
Here is the first run of AS SSD for the Micron
M600 SSD. The overall score is slightly higher, which is a good way to start these
tests.
Filling the drive with data and leaving
less than 4GB of free space is a scenario that can happen on a 128GB SSD, in
that case you will face a drop in performance, mainly when you benchmark the
drive, because in real usage the drive was very snappy. As I said when you
benchmark the drive you can see that there is a drop in performance.
Leaving the drive filled with data up to
50% has a positive impact when I comes to benchmarking, again in real usage the
drive continued to feel very fast.
After removing all the unnecessary files,
the drive is able to reach a state that was very close to the result that I got
when the drive was first tested.
Before I close
this review I would like to take a look at the performance of Dynamic Write
Acceleration. To demonstrate how Dynamic Write Acceleration works
I’ll be using HD Tach RW. This way we can get a clear visual indication of
how the Micron M600 copes with read/write speeds.
We can see that
the Micron M600 and its Dynamic Write Acceleration technology is able to give a
very high write speed (SLC mode) for almost the first 60GB, after that the drive
goes back to MLC mode and very shortly you have a speed degradation. A very
impressive result, but more impressive was the fact that in real usage you
never get the feeling that the drive slows down.
This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
Conclusion:
Let us summarise the most important
positive and negative points below:
To sum up, this is what I would say:
-
The write performance when tested with
IOMeter isn’t as impressive as some other programs, other than that there isn’t
anything negative to be said for this 128GB drive.
+
The Micron M600 is a drive that has
excellent read performance, but it manages to also do a very good job when it
comes to write speed, especially for a drive that is only 128GB. All this is very
much achieved with the help of Dynamic Write Acceleration. This
technology will boost the write speed, something that is needed when it comes
to small drives. I do believe that a small amount of fine tuning of Dynamic
Write Acceleration is needed, at least for my taste, as I would prefer to have
a slightly lower write speed in favour of more consistency. Write endurance has
also gone up, from the 72TB that the Crucial
MX100 had to 100TB for the Micron M600 128GB SSD.
The parting sentence is:
“It’s very nice to see that Micron
continues to move forward, and the M600 is a fine example of what a
manufacturer can achieve. Let’s hope that this technology will be soon be moved
to Crucial SSDs”
I am going to give the Micron M600 the
“Very good” award.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark for providing a
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