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Today we are revisiting the Crucial m4 Solid-State Disk using the latest firmware, to see how it compares to the competition in terms of value and performance. This time we have the premium 512GB model on hand, so we are keen to see how half a terabyte of m4 handles itself...
Crucial announced worldwide availability of its next-generation solid-state drive back in April of 2011. Known simply as the "m4", the company's latest entry is hailed as the successor to its award-winning RealSSD C300, promising to deliver more speed and higher capacities.
The C300 was somewhat of a milestone for the consumer SSD market, being the only flash drive available with SATA 6Gb/s support for quite some time. Whereas most SSD makers opted for the SandForce SF-1200 controller with a peak read rate of 285MB/s, the C300 could hit speeds of 355MB/s courtesy of its Marvell "Van Gogh" 88SS9174 chip. On top of excelling at sequential throughput, the C300 provided strong random performance when working with files of all sizes, making it a well-rounded contender. However, it's been more than a year since the RealSSD C300 landed, and a lot has changed in that time. Above all, the latest SandForce SATA 6Gb/s controllers have been a real game changer. OCZ has undoubtedly delivered the finest SandForce-based product in the current generation. Powered by the SF-2281, the Vertex 3 (240GB) offers read and write speeds of up to 550MB/s and 520MB/s. While the Vertex 3 is representing things on the SandForce front, Intel launched its performance-oriented SSD 510 Series, touting reads and writes of 500MB/s and 315MB/s. The 510 Series surprised us a bit as it's outfitted with Intel's dated 34nm MLC NAND flash chips and a Marvell 88SS9174 controller instead of an Intel-made chip. Interestingly, Crucial has also decided to equip its m4 drives with the Marvell 88SS9174 controller, though the company has opted for more cost-effective 25nm flash memory. As a result, the 256GB model is currently fetching $1.46 per gigabyte, while the 250GB version of the Intel SSD 510 Series is considerably more expensive at $2.30 per gigabyte. Firmware plays a vital role for SSD’s and it can really make or break them. The latest generation SandForce SSDs were been plagued by a Firmware bug that would cause random BSOD errors. It took many months for this issue to be solved and in the meantime many users were left with unstable systems. Since its release the m4 has seen a number of important firmware updates that have improved the drives in a number of ways. Thankfully Crucial was not plagued by stability issues like SandForce partners, making the m4 a success from the start. That said, a recent bug which would case system crashes after 5184 hours was quickly fixed and has been labeled the 5200 bug. The 5200 bug firmware version has been called 0309. Yet before this version Crucial released a 0009 version which claimed improved throughput performance and write latency. Drives with this firmware version were said to be 20% faster than drives using previously released firmware. Therefore today we are going to revisit the Crucial m4 with the latest 0309 firmware which also carries the performance improvements of the 0009 version. |
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Calle2003 Posts: 16 Joined: 2010-04-27 |
Posted on: 07/17/2012 10:28 PM
I couldn't decide between the Samsung 830 and Crucial m4. Based on your review I'll choose the m4. PS Have you tested the 000F firmware since this review?
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Steve Posts: 80 Joined: 2010-02-08 |
Posted on: 07/17/2012 11:47 PM
Hi Calle, the m4 is a nice choice. I have not retested with the 000F firmware since it doesn't claim to improve performance and there are no stability issues that we have encountered. |