Tuesday, April 9th 2013

Crucial M500 SSD Series Now Available

by
btarunr
 Discuss (27 Comments)
Crucial started shipping its M500 line of consumer SSDs. Available in 2.5-inch SATA (7 mm-thick), mSATA, and NGFF M.2 form-factors, the drives combine Micron 20 nm MLC NAND flash with a Marvell-made processor. All three form-factors take advantage of 6 Gb/s SATA. The drive is available in 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities for all three form-factors, while the 2.5-inch gets a 960 GB "terabyte-class" capacity option, as well.

Sequential read speeds on all capacities are as high as 500 MB/s, while sequential write speeds cap out at 130 MB/s and 250 MB/s for the 120 GB and 240 GB variants, respectively; and reach 400 MB/s on the 480 GB and 960 GB variants. The drives are backed by 3-year limited warranties, 1.2 million hours MTBF, and 72 TB total bytes written (TBW) write endurance (that's 40 GB per day). TRIM, NCQ, and SMART are standard issue. The 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB variants are priced at US $129.99, $219.99, $399.99, and $599.99, respectively.

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27 Comments on Crucial M500 SSD Series Now Available

#1
Jorge
The famous "up to xxx speed"... Only in benches, not in real use.
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#2
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
JorgeThe famous "up to xxx speed"... Only in benches, not in real use.
At least you know they'll never cross those speeds (500 MB/s or 130 MB/s). It's not like they're saying "up to 600 MB/s" (SATA rev. 3 theoretical max).
Posted on Reply
#4
Tarkhein
TheLostSwedeThat's not what expected... why are the 120 and 240GB SKU's so damn slow? Plextor is using the same controller and they get a lot better performance out of it.
Even the old Plextor M3 is faster - www.plextor-digital.com/index.php/en/M3/m3.html
It might be because they're using fewer (but higher capacity) NAND inside compared to Plextors' offerings.
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#5
RejZoR
So, what makes these better than "old" M4's ? Their write speeds are still just as rubbish as on old series, so what gives!? They only provide bigger drives. They could just as well do that under the M4 branding...
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#6
Ghost
RejZoRSo, what makes these better than "old" M4's ? Their write speeds are still just as rubbish as on old series, so what gives!? They only provide bigger drives. They could just as well do that under the M4 branding...
TheLostSwedeThat's not what expected... why are the 120 and 240GB SKU's so damn slow? Plextor is using the same controller and they get a lot better performance out of it.
Even the old Plextor M3 is faster - www.plextor-digital.com/index.php/en/M3/m3.html
Oh, you already know about their real world performance. Care to share a link to a comprehensive review?
Posted on Reply
#8
RejZoR
It was fast in reads. For writes it was slow. And if you needed sequential writes (writing massive files like videos) it was a no go...
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#9
NeoXF
Wow, the 960GB one is actually sanely priced... up 'till now, every single SSD of beyond 480/512 GB had insanely inflated prices... Heck, even the 480/512 GB ones where more expensive per GB than 240/256 ones... So I'm hoping SSD's are finally seeing the move to 480/512 GB as a sweet spot.
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#11
RCoon
Old M4 was better in terms of speeds...
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#13
badtaylorx
LAN_deRf_HAThere shouldn't still be people falling for that write speed crap. The M4 became the top selling drive not just from reliability but because real world testing showed it was a fast drive.

Most interesting part here is the 960 www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148696

Look at that price compared to the 480 www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148695

This stuff is just going to get lower and lower.
even cheaper using this "newzon" thing i got yesterday...:rockout:

www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQ8RGL6/?tag=tec06d-20
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#16
blibba
RejZoRSo, what makes these better than "old" M4's ? Their write speeds are still just as rubbish as on old series, so what gives!? They only provide bigger drives. They could just as well do that under the M4 branding...
They're not better than the old M4s. They use new, larger, higher latency chips and real-world performance in similarly sized drives will be similar or worse vs. the M4, outside of a few specific areas that have seen architectural improvements. The main deal with these drives is that they'll bring down the cost of 1TB SSDs by 50% or so.
Posted on Reply
#17
Jacez
blibbaThey're not better than the old M4s. They use new, larger, higher latency chips and real-world performance in similarly sized drives will be similar or worse vs. the M4, outside of a few specific areas that have seen architectural improvements. The main deal with these drives is that they'll bring down the cost of 1TB SSDs by 50% or so.
If they're worse than the M4's.. why are they called M500's?
Posted on Reply
#18
Nordic
JacezIf they're worse than the M4's.. why are they called M500's?
Higher number does not always need to mean faster. Just a new iteration.
Posted on Reply
#19
Jacez
james888Higher number does not always need to mean faster. Just a new iteration.
But that's misleading, because so far they have been faster.

M4 was a great leap from C300.

Also, the naming scheme is confusing.

Cxxx, then Mx, now Mxxx.

Why!?
Posted on Reply
#20
Nordic
JacezBut that's misleading, because so far they have been faster.

M4 was a great leap from C300.

Also, the naming scheme is confusing.

Cxxx, then Mx, now Mxxx.

Why!?
You are in the wrong hobby. Amd has a 7870 and a 7870 myst. Very different cards. Nvidea 650ti and 650ti boost, and 560ti and 560ti 448. Those are the only ones I can think of right now.
Posted on Reply
#21
blibba
JacezIf they're worse than the M4's.. why are they called M500's?
5870 vs. 6870
5970 vs. 6970
8800GTX vs. 9800GTX

etc.
Posted on Reply
#23
blibba
Prima.VeraHmmmmm....

www.asicentral.com/images/blogs/grumpy-no.jpg


Even in the games where the superior computational performance of the 9800GTX allowed it to pull-ahead, at any reasonable level of resolution and AA, its narrower memory bus left the 8800GTX with superior minimum FPS.
Posted on Reply
#24
NeoXF
Well, I'd like to see a internal triple/quad RAID 0 with 960/1024 GB SSDs like these, for something less than 1000 $ in a old-fashioned 3.5" size... on that SATA Express thingy I'm looking forward to for a while... so as to they wouldn't have excuses to why I haven't see benched SSD speeds higher than 565MB/s or so...
Posted on Reply
#25
blibba
NeoXFWell, I'd like to see a internal triple/quad RAID 0 with 960/1024 GB SSDs like these, for something less than 1000 $ in a old-fashioned 3.5" size... on that SATA Express thingy I'm looking forward to for a while...
Well the 960GB variant of this drive will be about $599 at launch. So, you might as well say that you'd like to see the 4770K at $5. That said, we've seen massive SSD price-drops before, so who knows.
NeoXFso as to they wouldn't have excuses
SATA3 is not an "excuse", it's a technical limitation. And besides, sequential transfer speeds are hardly the holy grail of SSD performance - you can match an SSD in this area with a few HDDs in RAID, but actually in the real world this would not be a comparable solution.
NeoXFto why I haven't see benched SSD speeds higher than 565MB/s or so...
Have you not seen any reviews of PCI-E SSDs (e.g. OCZ Revodrive) or SSD RAID arrays?

Micron basically already offers what you're looking for (at a much higher price) in the form of the p320h. 1.75GB/s sequential reads.

www.micron.com/products/solid-state-storage/enterprise-pcie-ssd/p320h-25-inch-pcie-ssd
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