Crucial C300 SATA 6Gb/s SSD Review
Test Setup and Results
Published: 23rd June 2010 | Source: Crucial | Price: £297.26 |
Test Setup and Results
As we had the MSI 890FXA-GD70 on the test bench and it's replete with a SATA 6Gb/s controller we took advantage of this to test the Crucial C300.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Processor @ 3.9GHz
MSI 890FXA-GD70
4GB G.Skill 2000MHz RAM @ 1333MHz
ASUS Radeon HD5850 Top
Cougar 1000CM 1KW PSU
Corsair H50-1
Windows 7 64 Bit
Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Although the MSI comes with a SATA 3Gb/s port as well we'll skip testing on that. There are plenty of SATA 3Gb/s SSDs around, including Crucials excellent M225 we reviewed a few weeks ago. As this is very much the "next generation" of Solid State Drives we're going to be putting it up against the best of the current generation, the Corsair Nova 128GB on a SATA 3Gb/s interface to see if the technology swap really gives the results we hope.
But first, let's get a look at some graphs.
HD Tune
Anyone want to see the smoothest graph in the world? How about these results then Ladies and Gentlemen? The read graph is about the flattest result we've ever seen, and the write graph, although the speeds aren't as high as we'd hoped, is equally flat barring the four occassions the cache switched and caused a brief spike. Absolutely un-noticeable in use we hasten to add.
Everest Ultimate
Everest provides a more stable SSD read test thanks to its fearsomely regular updating. The random read test spiked to just shy of 400MB/s which is ridiculously good. Once we move to the linear read we see a graph that rivals the HD Tune one above for flatness. Linear is absolutely the perfect description, with only 4MB/s deviation between minimum and maximum.
It's flatter than Jim after his birthday evening.
HD Tach
Finally in our graphing goodness we see HD Tach give us very similar results. One thing is not in question, this C300 really flies.
Crystal Disk Mark
Although the read speeds are confirmed in Crystal Disk Mark, we need to mention something about the write speeds. Read speeds are always more important because you read way more than you write, but nonetheless seeing only 145MB/s in our write tests is disappointing for a drive at this end of the market.
With our singular tests completed, let's run this up against our SATA 3Gb/s weapon of choice and see how it fairs.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by name='Warzone'
Indeed but all that blazing still burns a hole in the wallet
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Ohhh the one my ex wife took off with.
did you know there is a firmware upgrade for these drives,
Release Date: 5/20/2010
Change Log:
•Improved Power Consumption
•Improved TRIM performance
•Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11)
•Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss
•Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency
•Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data
•Improved Data Integrity
I can vouch for the improvments as Im running a pair on the marvell 6gb/s controller on the RE3
Im getting 450 reads and 250 writes !!
Rick
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Originally Posted by name='fmsam'
Cheers for the review TTL,
did you know there is a firmware upgrade for these drives, Release Date: 5/20/2010 Change Log: •Improved Power Consumption •Improved TRIM performance •Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11) •Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss •Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency •Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data •Improved Data Integrity I can vouch for the improvments as Im running a pair on the marvell 6gb/s controller on the RE3 Im getting 450 reads and 250 writes !! Rick |
There are many ppl out there who are still under the impression that you cant use raid on the marvell 9128 6gb/s contoller on Rampage 3 !
Well do they really think Asus would drop such a clanger, when the board its competing against has the same chip and uses raid.
my advice to those ppl is shut up unless youve actually tried it.
http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/v...00raidsnip.png
Rick
I see you have 2 128 gb ssds i n raid 0
what knid of speeds do you get ?
No wonder you have quick speeds with raid0, I was starting to think we had missed something huge with a firmware update! Ours came with the latest FW anyways I just checked.
and crucial use garbage collection when raided and not trim, I test the drives every 3 days and they are actually getting faster, go figure !!
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