Upgraded my Mac Pro to Crucial M4

[rondocap]

So I have a 2009 Mac Pro, 16GB of ram, etc - and I had an OZC Vertex 2 120GB ssd drive. It was nice, quick.

I bought a 256GB Crucial M4 (Only $179 on amazon!!) and...wow!

What a huge difference in speed - it's noticeable in normal usage. Not only that, the xbench scores are much higher - I got 460 on the disk test, while on the OCZ drive I could barely break the mid to high 200's.

What a fantastic hard drive.

Even in the disk speed test, where I would get something like 60/170 on the OCZ, I'm getting 235/268 on the M4.

I never knew on SATA II this drive could be so much faster than the OCZ.

 

[Buffsteria]

Must've been just one day, Amazon has it for $210 now....bah.

 

[rondocap]

Yeah, I just got it on Wednesday I think it was.

 

[Hey Jude]

Yeah, I just got it on Wednesday I think it was.

I upgraded from a Samsung, and I agree that my MP is now is blazingly fast. I also bought on Wednesday but for $189 ---received it yesterday, so the price either increased or dropped after my purchase.

 

[VirtualRain]

SSD prices are dropping like a rock. When they first launched, the M4 was around $450. I purchased an M4 on sale at Christmas for $350. A week ago I picked one up locally for $200. And now, on a good day, you can get one for $179?! I'm not complaining, but I wonder what's going on?!?! It's not like a new generation of NAND has suddenly appeared rendering these drives we're using obsolete?! It's bizarre.

 

[Buffsteria]

Wait, if his Vertex 2 benchmarked at 60/170, then something was wrong. That's far below normal performance for that drive.

 

[akadmon]

SSD prices are dropping like a rock. .

Last time I checked (probably late last year), prices were barely lower than back in early 2011 when I picked up my 128 GB Crucial SSD. I'm thinking I might just replace it with the 512 GB version when I get my new MP. Being able to keep my huge LR catalog on an SSD will be so sweet!

 

[deconstruct60]

SSD prices are dropping like a rock. .... but I wonder what's going on?!?! It's not like a new generation of NAND has suddenly appeared rendering these drives we're using obsolete?! It's bizarre.

The much higher multiples are being lowered to make room for the next generation. It isn't the NAND that is changing much year over year (it is but not the major push). It is the controllers.

The M4 uses pretty much the same hardware as the C300
"... Under the hood, er, chassis we have virtually the same controller as the C300. The m4 uses an updated revision of the Marvell 9174 (BLD2 vs. BKK2). ..."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review

So that is a two year old design. There used to be a price multiplier for SATA III ( 6Gb/s ). Now just about every SSD vendor has 2 or 3 6Gb/s models.

The M4 has had what , 6 or 7 , firmware bugfix/updates ? I guess that is an upside of benchmarking the drive every month trying to squeeze out better numbers, but doesn't really inspire "suitable for production use" .



As for the speed test of the OCZ Vertex 2 versus the M4. Was that the Vertex 2 numbers when new or after several months of usage? The M4 can backtrack over time also. Since it is a 6Gb/s drive it can operate closer to the 3Gb/s upper bound of SATA II ( if using naive driver sleds ), but it is really "steady state" ( after a couple of months) where find he difference.

To a lessor extent the drive sizes are different. If were using the Vertex 2 at 80% full and now 50% ; that helps also.