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The M4 SSD arrives in a very stylish white and blue box …
This box opens up in a gatefold design revealing the drive inside. There are two versions of this drive, one with a data transfer kit, costing £15 extra.
The drive is supplied in an understated chassis with the Crucial name on the front and specifications on the back.
The Crucial M4 256GB drive uses the Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 controller which is the new version of the 88SS9174-BJP2 processor used in the previous range of C300 drives. There is also a large 256MB of DRAM memory onboard which is used as a cache.
There are four sizes of M4 released – 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB and they all use the same internal design with NAND connected to the controller across eight channels. The 256GB model we are reviewing today uses 16×16 (2x channel) Micron NAND, which is 25nm. As with previous drives in this series the smaller capacity drives use lower density NAND which means that performance is reduced.
Im curious, and no one has ever explained this really well, when would compressible and incompressible data make a difference, isnt ‘windows’ code all compressible data regardless?
Sandforce is really in a league of its own right now.
I always liked crucial, their website is great too which has helped my family in the past when they are looking for upgrades. the scanning capability.
Rumors right now that Sandforce 2281 has some quality control issues, until this is cleared up this might be a better bet. always had a problem with sandforce quality control. Crucial will never have that problem.
Intel and Crucial just cant compete with SF. they are miles ahead.
I agree, a small price drop would Be a good move for crucial
Sandforce is great but this is a good option, just not quite as quick, most people wouldnt notice
Chances are you are using the Intel RST 10.1 drivers (and/or earlier versions). It is buggy when used in conjunction with the M4 and particular firmware because of a buggy Link Power Management setting that is enabled by default by Intel. This is most apparent by the no-score for gaming in Vantage. This Intel driver issue “will” also adversely affect other M4 benchmark scores, even when it’s not readily apparent.
There are four ways to fix it that I’m aware of:
1.(this one worked for me in lab troubleshooting before I knew it was a LPM driver issue) Go into device manager and change to MSAHCI driver, reboot, and then change back to Intel RST driver and reboot again.
2. Upgrade to latest rev firmware
3. Manually edit LPM registry lines. You’ll have to look up the exact registry enries as I can’t remember them off hand.
4. Use Intel RST 10.5+ driver versions (available from numerous sources, but probably not WHQL certified yet).
>While the M4 256GB is clearly ahead of the previous generation C300 drives, it is fair
>to say that it has a tough time competing against the latest Sandforce 2281 powered
>solid state drives.
This is late in the game, but I fail to see the “clearly ahead” of the C300 proof when you are comparing a 256G C4 to a 64G C300… the smaller drives are significantly slower than the larger ones, so this is truly NOT a fair comparison. I hope you are comparing apples to apples in current reviews, but I arrived here mainly hoping to find a comparison of the C300 to the newer M4.
Thanks,
Its a very old review Jack. there are much more indepth comparisons now in the SSD reviews.