The Crucial M4 256 GB distinguish itself from the 128 GB version by the Flash chips, which are 29F128G08CFAAB. The page size is 4 KB, and the bloc size is 1 MB. These chips are 25nm and combine two 32 Gb dies. The Crucial M4 128 GB we tested combine a Marvell 88SS9174-BL02 controller, a Micron DRAM chip (on its back) and 16 Micron 29F64G08CFACB flash chips. Translated from french by myself (sorry for the mistakes) : It's not, that's exactly what is said in the article. The M4 128GB drives do have me very interested - especially if what they're saying - 4k pages on the smaller NAND, is true. I think Anand tries to do that in his light/heavy workload tests, but again I don't know if those results reflect real-world usage.Īs far as Anand's 2011 new tests somehow favoring the V3's - I don't think that's on purpose - some say Anand has a preference for the intel drives, if any. We need a non-subjective "user experience" benchmark. I honestly think the collection of various benchmark tools we have along with what the reviewers show, still don't tell the whole story. I mean if somebody could convince me that 2 C300 256GB's in R0 would out-perform my 2 V3 240GB's in overall snap/real world experience, I'd buy two, test 'em and sell whatever's the slowest pair.
Yes, on paper and HiMon tell us what goes on in the background, but honestly, Windows does such a good job never exposing any of that to the end user - It has been optimized for spinning disks. This is what we all agree on, yet do we see any REAL WORLD difference QD1 4K random reads between any one of those drives in this review make a difference in what we experience? I think we've gotten to the point where unless you're a true 24/7 power user that's got applications or processes that hammer your storage up and down - only then will the fast drives really shine.ĤK Random Read is the most important thing for 97% of users. Gaming, yes, levels do load faster in R0 with fast SSDs - tested this a thousand times. That's where I'd love to get a faster SSD. I can slow my X-25M G2 160 down to a crawl at work with about 40 things open at any given time. ONLY when I'm doing heavy, heavy multitasking, application installs or large amounts of file copying do I see a difference - and that is maybe 2% of time spent. But boot times mean nothing to me, some folks it does, but any SSD is going to boot about the same within a second or two of each other.Īs far as general browsing and light usage, in W7 圆4, there's ZERO difference between my SSDs. Reason is it doesn't have a creative soundcard in the box. I've got a 60GB Vertex 1 and it actually boots far faster than 2 V3's (120's OR 240's) - like 3-4 seconds faster. I've had a TON of different SSDs in a ton of different systems and honestly, especially on an overclocked system, you REALLY have to be paying attention to see much of difference on normal day to day usage. Even the Ramdisk shows little improvement when considering how much faster it is compared to an SSD. Reality though is that in the practical tests there is no real difference between any of the SSD's. we need to let all of these drives out in the wild for a bit to mature, then we should see a clear winner emerge. This is exactly why i have been waiting around on the 25nm 'generation'. You take into account the history of the reliability of a crucial controller vs the history of reliability in a SandForce controller and it becomes a no-brainer according to the latest data ive seen coming out. pcmv traces) it seems to be much better than initial reports. now that bug has been addressed apparently, because in all current testing that i have seen the M4 is beating the V3 handily. There was a bug with compatibility and the M4 with certain controllers when the first round of reviews came out. in the qd32 though the M4 was right there.
Unfortunately those 'bright minds' at maximum pc gave the V3 the overall win based on its max sequential LOL. PCMark Vantage, which mirrors real-world applications, actually gives the top spot to Crucial’s m4 SSD, with the Vertex 3 a close second.