The Crucial BX200 (480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Crucial's First TLC NAND SSD
by Billy Tallis on November 3, 2015 9:00 AM ESTPerformance Consistency
Starting things off, our performance consistency test saturates the drive with 4kB random writes for a full hour, with a queue depth of 32, the maximum supported by the AHCI protocol used by SATA and most PCIe drives. This puts the drive's controller under maximum stress and writes enough data to exhaust all free space and spare area on the drive. This is an unrealistic workload for any client use, but it provides a worst-case scenario for long-term heavy use, and it sheds light on how different SSD controllers behave and if their performance will hold up as they fill up.
The average of the last 400 seconds of the test gives us a steady-state IOPS rating that is usually very different from what the manufacturer specifies for a new, empty drive. We also quantify the consistency of the drive's random write performance, and provide plots of the performance over the course of the test.
The BX200 is off to a poor start, with very low steady-state IOPS where the BX100 managed to place closer to the middle of the pack.
The BX200's consistency is also at the bottom of the chart, indicating that there's wide variability between its best and worst performance even after entering steady-state.
For a brief moment, the BX200 performs almost as advertised, and then for a few minutes it performs well for a budget drive, but when it runs out of cache and spare area, performance hits the floor.
Save for the periodic but infrequent excursions to 9k IOPS and 20-25k IOPS, the BX200's steady-state hovers between 200 and 700 IOPS: better than a hard drive, but not what we want to see from a SSD.
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extide - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
You guys made a typo on page 8, under "Mixed Sequential Read/Write Performance" -- you duplicated "duplicating" hehBilly Tallis - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
Ironic. Thanks.NeonFlak - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
1tb Mushkin Reactor for less than $300 any day over this.MikhailT - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
Is it me or is Crucial messing up lately with regressed successors? MX100 was great but MX200 was not that great and BX100/BX200 is even worse. It would've been better for them to just keep MX100 and drop prices over time.Crucial is basically just convincing me to switch to Samsung next time.
leexgx - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
BX100 was very good for laptops, very low power use even when under loadBX200 is slower and use crap load more power , the TLC drives are just not worth the £10 cheaper price
LarsBars - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
I've heard AnandTech say in the past, "It doesn't matter which brand of SSD you go with- just that you go with SSD."It looks like the BX200 means we need to be more vigilant about which SSDs we buy.
JimmiG - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
It wouldn't be terrible if it was a bit cheaper. If the price drops over the next couple of months (which usually happens with SSD's), it would be great as a "secondary SSD", especially the 960GB model. However at the current prices, you're better off paying a tiny bit more for much better performance and endurance.Hulk - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
I don't understand. Same endurance as the BX100 series using the same process size yet this is TLC vs. MLC for the BX100?While the performance is not great I could see this for media storage if the price is right. And by right I mean $200/TB.
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
The endurance ratings for warranty purposes are only loosely connected to the actual P/E cycle count, and are usually pretty conservative. Plus, the BX200 does have the benefit of more sophisticated error correction.jabber - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
Time to buy up the clearance BX100s!