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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The Benjamins - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
The flyer I link shows the rated Sequential speeds and IOPS are the same for all capacities, so I wouldn't expect it to vary muchDanNeely - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
0 variation at all over all capacities strikes me as suspicious, not reassuring.jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Oddly they note in the pdf that those numbers are:"Based on the published specs of the 1TB model. Speeds based on internal testing. Actual performance may vary"
Ninhalem - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I think I finally found the drive to replace my aging mechanical drive in my venerable 2009 Macbook Pro.linkman10 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
Still going on that with an HDD? I'm still using the same model and an SSD sure perked it up.casteve - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Nice part. Look forward to seeing the 256 and 512MB results. Too bad the Crucial Storage Executive is still Java based.hansmuff - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
The tool that you have to use what, a few times a year being Java based is some sort of problem? How?ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Do you need it for anything but a FW update? I expect there'll be a few updates now in the beginning but I definitely wouldn't call it a problem.Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I think I've updated firmware on my Crucial drives, but I know I don't have Java on any of those systems.ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Java comes with the dashboard installer.