The Crucial MX500 1TB SSD Review: Breaking The SATA Mold
by Billy Tallis on December 19, 2017 8:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Crucial MX500 turns in the best average data rate score on the Heavy test that we've seen from a 1TB-class SATA drive. When the test is run on a full drive, the MX500's performance falls below that of the Samsung 850 PRO and 850 EVO.
The average and 99th percentile scores of the Crucial MX500 are typical for a good SATA SSD. The MX500 doesn't set any records here, but at least the latency doesn't climb out of control when the test is run on a full drive. This is a notable improvement over the MX300.
The average read latency of the Crucial MX300 is fast by SATA standards, but it doesn't quite match the Samsung 850 PRO. When the test is run on a full drive, the average read latency suffers and the MX500's score is merely average for a mainstream 1TB drive. The average write latency is slightly below average in both cases, but not to a degree worthy of concern.
The 99th percentile read latency of the MX500 falls in the middle of the pack, though running the test on a full drive has a bit more of an impact than for most drives. The 99th percentile write latency is reasonably low whether or not the test is run on a full drive.
The power consumption of the Crucial MX500 on the Heavy test is significantly higher than the record-setting MX300, but the MX500 certainly doesn't qualify as power-hungry compared to the broader field of competitors. The Samsung 850 PRO and EVO drives require much more power on this test than the MX500.
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Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
MLC and TLC are different at die level. Once the wafer is produced it's no longer possible to switch from MLC to TLC or vice versa. Sure TLC could be used in pseudo-MLC mode by only programming the lower and middle pages, but that is not the same thing.mode_13h - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
I'm not saying you're wrong, but please explain how Crucial's Dynamic Write Acceleration gets a significant write performance benefit by doing similar.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I'm pleased with this product. Keep up the good work Micron, and keep lowering SSD prices!jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
A bit suspicious that there are no specs and prices for the 512GB version, hopefully the perf drop won't be too large.Other than that, all good here.
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Officially, Crucial is only launching the 1TB model today. The other capacities have to wait a little longer for a proper announcement.The Benjamins - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
They will offically have a 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB models in 2.5" and up to 1TB in M.2http://www.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/pdf/pro...
witp - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Got other capacities prices, unofficialy ofc.Excl VAT, incl distributors' margin, for both M.2 and 2.5'' versions, that will be:
250GB ~74USD
500GB ~130USD
1TB ~238USD ; for comparison
2TB 2.5'' only ~465USD
Availability here in duckland ;) please don't mistake with Deutchland ;))) for W02/18
jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I supposes my comment wasn't clear enough, wasn't suggesting it's your fault. Anyway, these things are always on purpose and it seems that they don't want to talk about lower capacities at all, they want people to see the MX500 perf as it is today at 1TB. A bit of a red flag but hopefully 512GB will be ok too.Billy Tallis - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I'm expecting them to sample at least one of the smaller capacities, if not all of them. I did mention recently that I probably would have given the BX300 an award if they had sent me the 120GB model, because that one is such a clear winner above the sparse competition in that capacity range.jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
They've been doing a pretty good job with both MX and BX series, good deals usually.With the new CEO they should start pushing harder in SSD. I think they had some issues a few months back and maybe that's why this one got delayed but I would expect to see them focusing more on SSD.