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Plextor M3 256GB vs. Crucial M4 256GB

Kusnierek

Kusnierek

Member
First off, let me clarify that this is not a thread debating which I should get, because I have already purchased both. 😛 I'm just looking for advice on where I should use them. Here are their advertised specs:

Plextor M3 256GB SATA III (6.0Gb/s)
Max Sequential Read: Up to 510 MB/s
Max Sequential Write: Up to 360 MB/s
4KB Random Read: Up to 70,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write: Up to 65,000 IOPS
Power Consumption (Idle): 0.1W
Power Consumption (Active): 5W

Crucial M4 256GB SATA III (6.0Gb/s)
Sustained Sequential Read: Up to 500 MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s)
Sustained Sequential Write: Up to 260 MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s)
4KB Random Read: Up to 45,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write: Up to 50,000 IOPS
Power Consumption (Idle): < 85 mW
Power Consumption (Active): 0.16W

One of these drives is going into my desktop PC as my Windows boot drive, which has SATA 6.0Gb/s support. The other is going into my Late 2009 MacBook, which only has SATA 3.0Gb/s support. My instinct is to put the Crucial drive in the MacBook, since it has lower advertised performance, and therefore (by my reasoning) would suffer a lower decrease in speed by using it at SATA 3.0Gb/s speeds than the Plextor would. Also, unless this is a terrible mistake in Newegg's specifications, the Crucial drive uses way, way less power than the Plextor and would therefore be better suited for a battery environment. On the other hand, I don't know if there are firmware or other hardware issues that might make one drive more suited for one device or the other.

If anyone has any advice on the issue, I'm all ears. Err, eyeballs?
 
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not sure if this helps, but here is a bench of my new Cruicial M4 on a sata 2 AHCI controller. (ICH10R on asus P6X58D premium)


asssdbenchm4ct256m4ssd2.jpg
 
Thanks Shmee. That's pretty damn good, actually, for SATA II.
Unless anyone else has any advice, so far I'm thinking Plextor on the desktop PC, and Crucial on the MacBook, for now.

Now some other advice: should the first thing I do be to hook these up to my PC and upgrade the firmware to the latest versions? I've heard that in some cases you should keep the firmware the same unless you need to solve a problem. On the other hand, I heard the first version of Crucial M4's firmware had an almost guaranteed fail rate that they even acknowledged.
 
I was shopping for a 256GB SSD last week. I was torn between the Samsung 830, Plextor M3 and Crucial M4.
I bought the 256GB Cruciakl M4 based only on price at the time ($204 shipped).
I was leaning towards the other two, especially the 5 year warranty Plextor, but bottom line price won out.
If you can handle the premium, I'd pop for the Plextor.
 
The Plextor was $239 with a $40 mail in rebate, so $199 shipped a week ago. 😛 Which I did get. Along with the Crucial.
 
I have the 128GB versions of each. Both run great. The Plextor has better testing stats but no real world difference in my daily usage.
 
I've had the 256mb Plextor in my 2011 Macbook Pro for the past 7-8 months and have only positive remarks. I'm still on the v1.0 firmware, but will soon be updating to 1.05 which offers enhance background garbage collection efficiency and improved sequential read performance.
 
Hey so my Plextor came, and it says it has firmware 1.01. I burned the 1.05 firmware to both USB and CD and neither will boot. When I boot from USB it says something like "Remove other drives and press any key to restart", even when I have no other drives plugged in. I can't even get it to boot from CD, even though my BIOS is set to boot from CD-ROM first. Even when I hit F12 on boot and select CD-ROM as the boot device upon booting up, it skips it and goes right to the HDD.

Is it possible to install Windows 7 on my Plextor drive and just set it up how I want and then go back and update the firmware at a later time when I get that all figured out? Without reformatting the drive, that is.
 
Have you tried playing with the SATA mode (i.e. switching it from IDE to ACHI or vice versa)? From what I have read, some people need to switch to IDE mode, although I've updated mine in ACHI mode (M3 updated three times, M3 Pro once).
 
^^^I had to do that on my Plextor before it would recognize the updated firmware. After I installed the new firmware I reset the bios to ACHI and it booted fine. It's an M3 drive also.
 
Weren't there issues of the Crucial M4 not playing well with OSX? Or has that been resolved?

Or maybe I'm misremembering... I don't know
 
I own both of these SSDs also, cept the 128GB versions
benchmarking them is literally within the margin of error imo, the results tend to sway between the two. I believe the M4 has higher read performance and the M3 has better write performance.

Here are some of my benchmarks I ran the M4 Run2 cause I forgot to trim, gained an easy 100MB/s in one test.
could likely get more out of the M3 if I ran the test another time or two ...
really can't say how the garbage collection stuff might play a role in the benchmarks
I've heard people say the M3 is more agressive with such things ..

Generally I prefer the M4 because it has more detailed smart output on my system
I just put the M3 in a laptop because of it's low power usage.
 
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Hellhammer said:
Have you tried playing with the SATA mode (i.e. switching it from IDE to ACHI or vice versa)? From what I have read, some people need to switch to IDE mode, although I've updated mine in ACHI mode (M3 updated three times, M3 Pro once).
Click to expand...

Thanks! That did the trick. Got Windows 7 installed and everything. 🙂
Now the only issue I seem to have is that, according to Plextor's performance program, I'm getting a lower average than I expected. I noticed the read speed always maxes out at 375MB/s, which you'll note is 3.0Gb/s. So I'm guessing my SSD isn't running at full SATA 6.0Gb/s like it should. I'm flashing my BIOS now to see if the updated BIOS will run it better but, not expecting much.
Does anyone know how to make a drive run in SATA 6.0Gb/s? It IS in the right port.
 
No, I'm still in AHCI mod. Windows was installed in AHCI mode too. I switched it back right after I updated the firmware.

EDIT: Something to note, when I boot up, the BIOS's AHCI Rom screen sees the Plextor M3 as running in 3.0G, and now that I plugged in my Crucial M4 to a SATA 3.0Gb/s port to update the firmware before installing in the Macbook, it says 1.5G right under it. Are ALL my SATA ports running at half-speed? Putting the drive in the other SATA 6.0Gb/s slot doesn't even let it show up on the aforementioned drive screen on boot, but it IS detected by the BIOS. The firmware is the latest version too. Tried different cables.
 
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Try updating RST drivers. Also, just to make sure, what motherboard do you have? If it's older than Sandy Bridge stuff, then there is likely a Marvell SATA 6Gb/s controller, and those suck to be honest.
 
Hellhammer said:
Try updating RST drivers. Also, just to make sure, what motherboard do you have? If it's older than Sandy Bridge stuff, then there is likely a Marvell SATA 6Gb/s controller, and those suck to be honest.
Click to expand...

It's a Gigabyte 790X: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128416

Yeah, I'm running an AMD system, and apparently, considering how everyone here seems to assume Intel all the time, I'm guessing this is some kind of problem.

Drivers though, shouldn't those only affect the hardware's operation with the OS? The AHCI Rom thing that detects the drive running at 3.0G speed is part of the BIOS.
 
Nothing, guys? Am I just SOL? I installed all the SATA drivers I thought would help from Gigabyte's website but still nothing. Any help would be appreciated.
 
I'm afraid neither of those updates did anything. The SSD Performance Analyzer still caps at 375MB/s, and the BIOS still detects it at 3.0G.
 
Unless your doing very large file transfers (all the time) you'll never see the difference. Just enjoy it and don't let it get you down.
 
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