
We would like to thank the following companies for supplying and supporting us with our test system hardware and equipment: AVADirect, GIGABYTE, Cooler Master, LSI, Corsair and Noctua.
You can read more about TweakTown's Storage Product Testing Workstation and the procedures followed to test products in this article.
To get the most out of your next generation SATA 6G drive you will need a motherboard based on Sandy Bridge. The P67 chipset has native SATA 6G capability, but only two ports. GIGABYTE set us up with the new GA-P67A-UD5 for our next generation SATA 6G testing and we've come to really like what this board has to offer. Intel also sent over their new Core i5 processor to accompany our other class leading products that make up the TweakTown Storage Product Review System.
Today we will focus on the Crucial m4 256GB SSD and compare it to both current and future products. SATA 6G is the future and will enable SSDs to really distance themselves from the traditional platter drives in both potential and real world performance.
ATTO Baseline Performance
Version and / or Patch Used: 2.34
ATTO is used by many disk manufacturers to determine the read and write speeds that will be presented to customers.

ATTO is globally recognized as the standard in which manufacturers determine their published drive speeds. Here we see that Crucial is really selling the m4 short and conservatively rating the drive at only 415MB/s read, when in fact the 256GB drive we tested delivered a solid 450MB/s. It isn't everyday that we see conservative ratings (especially with 25nm flash). If Crucial would rate the m4 at 450MB/s read I wouldn't object since this is how the rating is generally determined.
The same can be said for the write speed. Our sample produced 280MB/s write and Crucial rates their m4 at just 260MB/s. Our observed 4K writes were measured at nearly 190MB/s; that in conjunction with the increased 4K IOPS means the m4 will be a very fast drive for day to day, desktop performance.
PRICING: You can find products similar to this one for sale below.
United States: Find other tech and computer products like this over at Amazon's website.
United Kingdom: Find other tech and computer products like this over at Amazon UK's website.
Canada: Find other tech and computer products like this over at Amazon Canada's website.
- Page 1 [Introduction]
- Page 2 [Specifications, Pricing and Availability]
- Page 3 [The Packaging]
- Page 4 [The Crucial m4 256GB SSD]
- Page 5 [Test System Setup and ATTO Baseline Performance]
- Page 6 [Benchmarks - HD Tune Pro]
- Page 7 [Benchmarks - AIDA64 Random Access Time]
- Page 8 [Benchmarks - CrystalDiskMark]
- Page 9 [Benchmarks - PCMark Vantage - Hard Disk Tests]
- Page 10 [Benchmarks - PCMark Vantage - Drives with Data Testing]
- Page 11 [Benchmarks - AS SSD]
- Page 12 [Benchmarks - Passmark]
- Page 13 [Final Thoughts]
Recommended for You
- We at TweakTown openly invite the companies who provide us with review samples / who are mentioned or discussed to express their opinion of our content. If any company representative wishes to respond, we will publish the response here.
Related Tags
Latest News Posts
- Infinity War Iron Spider Suit now comes with game pre-order
- AMD CPU hero Jim Keller leaving Tesla to join Intel
- NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 WHQL drivers enables RTX on Volta GPUs
- GeForce/Radeon GPUs shipments expected to drop by a huge 40%
- Sharp's 70-inch 8K TV starts shipping, costs around $13,800
Forum Activity
- GA-X79-UD3 NVMe
- MyDigitalDiscount 128GB/256GB/512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Review
- EVGA DG-77 Mid-Tower Chassis Review
- Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Review
- B360M-ITX/ac does not see USB drive at all
Press Releases
- Micron Launches Industry's First Enterprise SATA Solid State Drives Built on Leading 64-layer 3D NAND Technology
- Micron, Rambus, Northwest Logic and Avery Design to Deliver a Comprehensive GDDR6 Solution for Next-Generation Applications
- Toshiba Memory America Unveils UFS Devices Utilizing 64-Layer, 3D Flash Memory
- ASUS Announces GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Series Gaming Graphics Cards
- ASUS Announces ASUS Hangouts Meet Hardware Kit