Final decision: Intel 510 or Micron C400?

Friends, I have to make my decision in 2 days. I need to decide between 250 GB Intel 510 and 256 GB Micron C400. I need to hear your valuable opinions. Please neglect the price difference.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

If price is not an issue get the Intel.

The one thing Crucial has over Intel is the price imo.

 

Maybe I am behind the times, but doesn't the 510 and the C400 use the same contoller and also the same raw materials.

I suppose that would lead me back to price.

Perry

 

yep get the cheaper one

 

Yes the difference is in the firmware. Intel performs a little bit better in Anand's Storagebench.

Also, based on Intel's track record I trust them a bit more when it comes to firmware.

 

Ok friends, thanks for the help. I'll get the cheaper one of the two.

Even if I purchase an SSD from an Ebay seller and he accepts no returns, I could always send the item to Intel or Micron to get RMA'd and replaced if necessary, right?

Or should I stay away from such Ebay sellers with "No returns" policy? I live in Turkey and returning the item the Ebay seller in USA would be a hassle for me anyway... but let me know your opinion.

 

I read that Intel (and probably also Micron) don't service certain OEM products.

I would always ask the Ebay seller if there's warranty on it.

 

The m4 has almost near equal performance on sequential read/write with the 510.

It has far better random 4k read/write performance.

I would go with M4, as it is more of a full package deal, with better pricing, but worse reliability

 

Why is the reliability worse? They both use the same Marvel controller, just different firmware. Intel only buys it's nand memory directly from Micron, so wouldn't that say something about the reliability of Micron's hardware? Only difference between these two drives is firmware, and as KillerBunny stated, the M4 kills the 510 in randon read/writes, which we all know is the most important spec in a drive for normal use.

FWIW, I've used this C400 for over three weeks now. Not a single problem and it keeps getting faster on benchmarks the more I add to it. It's practically a steal at the going price.

 

The firmware is precisely what people are concerned about. AFAIK, the latest firmware for the C300 is still 0006, which has a known bug...

 

But its weird, its not like 100% present, i see there are threads about it, but you see tons of people happy and raving about it. Crucial also stated to expect new firmware at the end of April, none new gen ssd are proven, so its a gamble with anyone. Personally i didnt like Intel move with 3rd party controllers instead of doing their own, so the value in my eyes of the 510 is much lower than X25 / 320s, for this reason i would go with Micron C400, specially for the price, its the only sata III sub $500 that performs competitive.

Im just going to wait to see if Samsung goes into sata III, with their good track on the 470, a company that i want to try, and maybe intel releases their x25e replacement sometime this year.

 

So you'd rather take the drive with higher 4K performance than the drive with higher real world performance?

 

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I've looked at every review of every drive before purchasing my M4. Money was not a priority. I went with real-world performance over top speed. And, as we all know, random 4K performance is real world performance.

Seems like everyone respects Anandtech for his thorough testing of SSD's. Here's what he has to say about PC Mark Vantage here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/8

"Next up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite. Any performance impacts here would most likely be reflected in the real world."

You'll notice something. The M4 beats the Intel 510 in every single test. Want to see another test? Here's the M4 vs Intel 510 head to head. Guess who wins? You got it. The M4.:

Crucial M4 256GB SATA 3 SSD Review – Vantage SSD Comparison & Conclusions | The SSD Review

So, with this data before you, PLEASE explain how the Intel outperforms the M4 in "real-world" comparisons. I know there is no perfect program to test this, but these are the best you can get, and the numbers don't lie.

 

PCMark Vantage isn't actually real world. It doesn't run the actual applications but it plays back recorded traces of sessions. Besides that, PC Mark Vantage simulates parts of Windows Vista, the Windows version that was released four years ago.

If you want to see current real world tests look at Anand's Storage bench 2011. This uses real applications and it was developed for Windows 7.

Here's another review that shows real world performance (5 pages):
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...d-c400-review-hd-video-read-write-speeds.html

Looking at all the real world tests that are available the Intel has a slight edge over the Crucial M4. But since the Crucial is cheaper I think the Crucial is the better buy.

We recently had a big discussion about whether 4K is really as important as people make it to be:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-sequential-read-write-numbers-pointless.html

 

Actually it says nothing

Intel and Micro both get their flash from another company called IMF, which they co-own (along with regular investors I think) partly because the flash market is so volatile, pun intended. The IMF literally stands for "Intel Micron Flash (Technologies)"

IM Flash Technologies Overview - Located in Lehi, Utah

The reliability comments are mostly based on the history of firmware, although no one has a clean record there, and a little bit on the brand power of Intel standing behind a product.

Micron is not crap though, and these two particular drives are so similar that price and personal preference are pretty much the only differences to consider.

 

Maybe it says something. I think it was Anand who suggested that Intel and Micron have dibbs on getting the best NAND from IMFT.

Manufacturers like OCZ and Corsair have to shop around, he suggested.

 

interesting idea though I doubt the business is run that way.

 

I was a bit skeptical about it too. I do think he has a point though. Intel and Micron don't shop around for NAND, while OCZ sometimes does.

 

true. There are the fact, that Intel/Micron only use IMFT and OCZ use whatever they can get(IMFT, Toshiba, Samsung ...). Then there are the 'guess' that Intel/Micron get the best crops. When you run a business as an independent entity, you maximize the profit so if OCZ is willing to pay the bucks, IMFT has no reason to reserve the best for Intel/Micron unless there are mandate for it to do so.

 

Intel and Crucial both use same Marvell controller. Intel writes their own firmware for the 510. Micron writes firmware for Crucial. Intel have been known to make reliable drives with very little problems. Crucial C300 did also have a Marvell controller and is in the same "league" as Samsung and Intel when it comes to reliability.
M4 may have much better 4K performance, expecially with more queue depths, and people have said that 4K is what counts, but reviews have shown that in real world tests, the last gen SSDs are pretty much equal. Same can be said about Vertex 3 vs M4 too. Benchmarks may look impressive, but scores mean 0 unless you compete with other people in having the best result.

@NoSlow5oh: Did you read the anandtech review or did you miss the part where Anandtech tested the drives with light and heavy workload? I much rather would look in to those results than the synthetic PCMark. And in all of these heavy and light workload tests, the 510 beat M4 except for 1. It even competed against Vertex 3, which is on paper much faster than 510. But like i said, even if they "beat" each other in these tests, they are equal in terms of speed on real world applications.
Here is what Anandtech said about Heavy workload test:

1) The MOASB, officially called AnandTech Storage Bench 2011—Heavy Workload, mainly focuses on the times when your I/O activity is the highest. There is a lot of downloading and application installing that happens during the course of this test. My thinking was that it's during application installs, file copies, downloading and multitasking with all of this that you can really notice performance differences between drives.

2) I tried to cover as many bases as possible with the software I incorporated into this test. There's a lot of photo editing in Photoshop, HTML editing in Dreamweaver, web browsing, game playing/level loading (Starcraft II & WoW are both a part of the test) as well as general use stuff (application installing, virus scanning). I included a large amount of email downloading, document creation and editing as well. To top it all off I even use Visual Studio 2008 to build Chromium during the test.

 

I am kind of side with tiller in that sequential read/write may actually be more important for people who do care about SSD performance. Along the following line of reasoning:

1. when jumping from HDD -> SSD, 4K read is the most noticeable thing as that represent snappiness.

2. between SSD, 4K read/write while may show measureable difference is very hard to be noticed except in benchmark

3. most people(at least laptop/desktop users) don't multitask(actively like building Chromium and at the same time installing office and playing game, all at the same time. We usually do 1 heavy duty thing and serveral light thing on the side.

4. So the most likely scenario of feeling the difference of SSD A and SSD B is that we are doing something that take noticeable time(usually something sequential in nature).

IOW, it is not whether A is faster than B but the chances that we would really notice the difference.

 

And most people don`t use these programs that often that use the big sequential speeds that varies so much between the drives. Which is why you won`t notice much between 510, M4, Vertex, heck even C300.
File copies happen few times per month at most maybe? I don`t think users would mind waiting a minute extra 2-3 times per month if they went for the slower drive

 

I think if I could run a test with some power users, give them their laptop without them knowing what SSD is in it, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the faster SSDs.

It's easy when you have a stopwatch or benchmark program but in real life most people will not be able to tell the difference between a 13 second or 15 second boot, for example.

For filecopies? how many times do you copy files from SSD to SSD? how many times are you waiting for the copy job to finish? I rarely copy from SSD to SSD and I rarely wait for it to finish.

 

That is very true and why I said in general comparing SSD performance is something for fun(and why I prefer x25m/320) and these 'measured' performance difference is most likely to be noticeable in sequential style usage.

 

Yup i agree. It is kinda sad really because each time a new SSD comes out we are all pumped up by the big specifications they have. But when you dig down deeper in to the actual data you find out that they mean very little. I wonder if we will actually see anything drastic improvements of speeds on SSD the next few years or have we met the 15 000 RPM of HDDs?

Yeah i agree with this. I too multitask when downloading or installing

 

edit: missread, sorry.

 

I read the whole thing. Did you read my whole post? AnandTech himself said that PC Mark Vantage was in his opinion the most "real-world" benchmark. I didn't say it.

As far as AnandTech's benchmarks go, he designed them himself. Which means as far as I know, there could be flaws in his programming that exploits a certain drives drawback that just happens to be another's priority. No program is perfect, and if you write the to max amount of your drive everyday and then start over the next day, and also run every one of those programs he himself incorporated into those benchmarks, then by all means get the Intel. For the majority (98%), the M4 still beats the 510 during "real-world" tests.

Honestly, as close as the top SSD's are, only benchmarks will show the difference. The main purchase decision comes down to reliability and price. This, of course, is only if you use your drive in the real world.

 

He actually said "most real-world- like hard drive test". I think what he means with that is that it's the closest thing to a real world test, it's not really one.

And even if it was a real world test, why trust a benchmark that uses the mediaplayer and boot processes of Windows Vista? Vista is outdated. PC Mark 7, which was written for Windows 7 will soon be released.

By the way, it's very easy to prove the fallacies of PC Mark Vantage. According to PC Mark Vantage the Corsair Force 120 is faster than a Intel 510 on SATA 6Gbps. Now look at real world tests, be it Techreport, Hardwareheaven or Storagereview. The Intel 510 is significantly faster.

Agreed.

 

If we should consider synthetic benchmarks as "which one is better" we can consider this review as well:

Crucial's m4 solid-state drive - The Tech Report - Page 6

510 is faster with all the tests of their drivebench except one of them: firefox compile, with file copies, with Bittorrent, with video transcoding, with virus scan.

We can argue all day long of which drive is the fastest. The bad thing is that each reviewer use their own tools and setups, which makes the comparisons a little off balance. "This review says this. But this review says that".

Truth is like stated million times in this forum: They are all pretty similar in terms of real world performance. Hardwareheaven review says the same. Members here are saying it. If you don`t want to listen to us, fine. Just don`t write here and hope that we will listen to you in return.

 

I am slowly being convinced and convincing myself that a Intel 510 will be my next drive. And... I can even afford the 250GB. But do I actually need it? Hmmmm, I was just fine with my 128 Corsair until it broke. But there was a time or 2 I had to put 20 - 30 GB of client data on it and at that time it was fuller than I liked.

I will figure it out.

 

No, it still says nothing when comparing the flash choices of Intel vs Micron, 1==1

It makes plenty of sense they both source flash from IMF, they went to the trouble to spin off and found it in the first place.

What would say something is if they source from anyone else in any significant quantity (e.g. not tiny eeproms on a network card) which they don't afaik.


Back to the OP topic, the benchmarks are really close overall on these twins-separated-at-birth drives, if you don't have a preference then let price make the decision for you.

 

I`d say go for it. I am happy with the size of my SSD 160GB, but i have made priorities so that i don`t need more. If i had 250GB i would have put more on it and not deleted stuff like i do now.

 

Get the cheaper one, since they are virtually the same item with different brand name.

Cheers
3Fees

 

I asked the Ebay seller. This was his response:

"It come with manufacturer's warranty, and we are very sorry, we do not know the policy for Micron international order, so we highly recommend you contact Micron first, we believe they will answer your question better in details.

And if you received defective item , we will help you to return or exchange with 30 days.
If passed 30 days, we highly suggest customer contact manufacturer directly.
Regards!"

Micron (and Intel) should cover the repair/replacement issues of the item under warranty, right?

 

Micron C400 is the OEM version and Crucial M4 is the retail version. Having said that, I would first contact Micron about warranty before you buy the C400 and be clear about the warranty status.

Intel is a little different. They have OEM retail drives they sell in brown boxes that do come with the 3 year warranty as well as OEM drives sold through Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc.. that do not come with Intel's warranty.

I recommend directly asking the source and provider of the warranty.

 

I just want to clarify something for myself:

The Intel 510 uses 34nm and the C400 uses 25nm NAND?

 

I don't know. I think you would have to contact them to find out.

 

Yep that's right. And this might be reason why the C400 are going to be priced cheaper than the competition.