Crucial MX100 SSD Specifications Appear Online

[Cristian_25H]

We're still a few days away from the official unveiling of MX100 solid state drive but thanks to a distributor jumping the gun we already have the full scoop on Crucial's latest creation. As previously revealed, the MX100 is set to be the first SSD equipped with Micron's 16 nm MLC NAND flash memory but not all models will have the 16 nm NAND - the 128 GB drive will pack 20 nm chips, while the 256 GB and 512 GB versions will have 16 nm flash.

All three MX100 drives come in a 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch chassis (a 9.5 mm adapter is included), and have a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, a Marvell 88SS9189 controller, and are backed by a three-year warranty.





Crucials' SSDs are capable of sequential read speeds of 550 MB/s while write speeds top 150 MB/s, 330 MB/s and 500 MB/s for the 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB models, respectively. The current pre-order prices are 70 Euro (128 GB), 95 Euro (256 GB) and 185 Euro (512 GB).



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[RejZoR]

So, a 2TB SSD should cost around 500 EUR. That sounds reasonable and i'd buy one.

 

[techy1]

So, a 2TB SSD should cost around 500 EUR. That sounds reasonable and i'd buy one.

that is good price, but why the hell you need 2TB SSD?... i need ssd for progs and database (250+ is enough), and HDDs for movies, porns and gamediscs (and 2tb will never be enough)

 

[RejZoR]

Because i have a 2TB HDD and it's enough. If i'd go SSD i'd go completelly or i'm not going to. Currently i have 2TB HDD paired with 32GB ReadyCache. Better than having stuff installed on some tiny SSD that i have to shuffle around to use it.

 

[hojnikb]

I wonder what endurance 16nm flash has ?

Since 128GB model is still using 20nm flash, im guess it went down..

 

[xorbe]

Yah I would love a 2TB SSD. Everything on one drive. I have 3 SSD presently 500+500+1000.

 

[techy1]

I guess there is some advantage to store in one huge SSD, without no backup... cuz you do not have to deal with that backup when that SSD passes away
I know my self - and 80% of my terabytes are movies that I never will watch again - it is nonsence for me to spend extra hundreds of $ to save them on SSD (just so I can load them 10 seconds faster - after all - that is a crappy movie that will waste a 1,5hours of my life, so I do not mind those few second for coppying from HDD to SSD, same with a crappy game .iso - it will waste hours of my life till I will get to conclusion: "uninstall that crap.... and never again!!!!" - so also there those few second of coppying over does not count ). for TeraBytes of crap to store HDD still rocks

 

[TheBrainyOne]

Who in their right mind would buy the 128 GB model just to save 25 Euros??!!

Edit: The MX100 512 GB performs identically to the 512 GB M550 (except Max 4K Read IOPS, which are just 5,000 lower)... Good job Crucial... You just cannibalized your high end drives...

 

[xorbe]

Who in their right mind would buy the 128 GB model just to save 25 Euros??!!

Edit: The MX100 512 GB performs identically to the 512 GB M550 (except Max 4K Read IOPS, which are just 5,000 lower)... Good job Crucial... You just cannibalized your high end drives...

I'm sure AT will show the real story. A couple numbers doesn't really paint the picture.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Good job Crucial... You just cannibalized your high end drives...

They cannibalize everyone's high end drives with their prices. Will probably be even worse since no other big name has a 16 nm drive out yet.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I wonder what endurance 16nm flash has ?

Since 128GB model is still using 20nm flash, im guess it went down..

More likely the use of 20nm flash is because the 128GB drive is using 64Gb die, and the 64Gb die are only made at 20nm. Remember that the more die you have the faster the SSD since operations can be parallelized (think RAID 0).

I guess Crucial decided that you need a minimum of 16 die for acceptable performance. If you were to use 128Gbit die in a 128GB SSD, that would mean only 8 die and therefore a slow SSD. It's the same as what Crucial did with the M550 to make sure that the low capacity drives still had acceptable performance.

Who in their right mind would buy the 128 GB model just to save 25 Euros??!!

See the point above. They likely have to use 20nm 64Gbit die to maintain acceptable performance in the 128GB drive. In that case, 16 128Gbit chips at 16nm is likely not much more expensive than 16 64Gbit chips at 20nm thus reducing the cost difference between the 128GB and 256GB drives.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Writes are crap for a 2014 drive...

 

[Fx]

This is the generation of SSDs that I have been waiting for. The price is extremely doable for SSDs with good performance, reliability, and capacity.

 

[Shinshin]

Drive went on sale more than a week ago where I live (at least you could order one...) and its prices are 10% lower than than the new Corsair LX series (size to size).

Waiting for reviews...

 

[hojnikb]

More likely the use of 20nm flash is because the 128GB drive is using 64Gb die, and the 64Gb die are only made at 20nm. Remember that the more die you have the faster the SSD since operations can be parallelized (think RAID 0).

I guess Crucial decided that you need a minimum of 16 die for acceptable performance. If you were to use 128Gbit die in a 128GB SSD, that would mean only 8 die and therefore a slow SSD. It's the same as what Crucial did with the M550 to make sure that the low capacity drives still had acceptable performance.



See the point above. They likely have to use 20nm 64Gbit die to maintain acceptable performance in the 128GB drive. In that case, 16 128Gbit chips at 16nm is likely not much more expensive than 16 64Gbit chips at 20nm thus reducing the cost difference between the 128GB and 256GB drives.

Thats can't be true at all, becase m500 120GB is using 128Gbit dies already and already hits ~130MB/s with only 8 dies. So it's kinda pointless to think they would need 16 dies to hit 150MB/s, considering m550 128GB hits 350MB/s with that configration

 

[rtwjunkie]

Writes are crap for a 2014 drive...

None of Crucial's SSD's (e.g. M4, M500, M550), that I can remember have ever had fast write speeds. They aren't really going for the speed demon award, and so don't compete with the high-speed market. Even with their RAM, Crucial has always been that day in and day out dependable piece of equipment. They've kind of built their hallmark on long term reliability and durability with just above average performance.

 

[hojnikb]

Other than 840PRO, m550 has the fastest write speeds on 120/128GB ssd.

You need to understand, that crucial isn't using any nasty tricks like compression or turbowrite (or nCache in case of sandisk). Write speeds on m500 is actually comparable to 840EVO, once you take away turbowrite.

Sandforce drives are league on its own. Their write speeds usually sux aswell, they just look good on paper (due to compression).

And not that write speed matters much anyway. Bulk of workload on client ssds is read anyway.

 

[hojnikb]

Writes are crap for a 2014 drive...

Then you can say 840EVO has crap speeds awell

 

[TheBrainyOne]

More likely the use of 20nm flash is because the 128GB drive is using 64Gb die, and the 64Gb die are only made at 20nm.

I guess Crucial decided that you need a minimum of 16 die for acceptable performance. If you were to use 128Gbit die in a 128GB SSD, that would mean only 8 die and therefore a slow SSD. It's the same as what Crucial did with the M550 to make sure that the low capacity drives still had acceptable performance.

M500 120 GB uses 8 128 Gb die and attains 140 MB/s write speeds.

M550 128 GB uses 16 64 Gb die and attains 300+ MB/s write speeds.

MX100 128 GB attains 150 MB/s write speeds.

Bingo?

 

[TheBrainyOne]

Other than 840PRO, m550 has the fastest write speeds on 120/128GB ssd.

Somebody forgot OCZ Vector, Vector 150, Vertex 450, Samsung XP941, Sandisk A110 and Plextor M6e.

And BTW, nCache is only used for storing the drive's firmware. It's not used for boosting write speeds.

 

[hojnikb]

Somebody forgot OCZ Vector, Vector 150, Vertex 450, Samsung XP941, Sandisk A110 and Plextor M6e.

And BTW, nCache is only used for storing the drive's firmware. It's not used for boosting write speeds.

All of the OCZs drives used tricks (performance mode), samsung, plextro and sandisk are PCI-E based, so not really a fair comparisment.

And yes, nCache IS used for boosting write speeds. Educate yourself.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6553/sandisk-ultra-plus-ssd-review-256gb

Small file writes are sent to the nCache to keep performance high, and idle time garbage collection likely dumps the nCache out to the much larger MLC array. The nCache was typically used as a way around having to use DRAM for data structure storage, but in the case of the Ultra Plus you get both: nCache + DRAM. I’m not sure there’s enough of an nCache in the Ultra Plus to make a big enough difference to justify the decision in this case.

 

[TheBrainyOne]

I’m not sure there’s enough of an nCache in the Ultra Plus to make a big enough difference to justify the decision in this case.

Anand wasn't even sure if the presence of nCache makes a difference. That's just a guess. Gimme proof of nCache making a difference like TurboWrite does.

What proof do you have that OCZ's performance mode makes a difference?? Don't quote Tomshardware because they haven't got a clue what they are talking.

 

[hojnikb]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6074/ocz-vertex-4-review-128gb performance mode.

nCache (as you could see from the anandtechs review) is intended for small writes, rather than big sequential writes, thats why its way smaller (~1GB). But sandisk is using pretty fast flash and 64Gbit dies, so write speeds don't suffer. It still makes it similar to turbowrite (pseudo SLC mode) just isn't used for all the writes.