Crucial RealSSD C300 disk goes to plaid

Robert Hallock 4 Feb, 2010 at 1:50pm ET Article published in Tech

Back in early December we spoke of a Micron-made solid state disk that was fixing to blow the doors off of the 2.5″ SSD performance race. Boasting IMFT’s industry-leading 34nm NAND flash, a SATA 6Gbps interface and an ONFI 2.1 Flash interface, the RealSSD C300 promised mind-boggling speeds of 355/215MBps read/write.

While such write performance is comparable to today’s leading SSDs, the read performance is more than 100MB/s ahead of most. In the ensuing time, the drive has inched closer to retail with several previews, and the results are in: The Crucial RealSSD C300 is even faster than advertised.

383MBps peak sustained read (ATTO)
227MBps peak sustained write (ATTO)
60MBps random 4k reads (CrystalDiskMark)
30MBps random 4k writes (CrystalDiskMark)
627 random read size IOPS (HD Tune)
357 random write size IOPS (HD Tune)

Though the drive’s write performance and access times are comparable to some of the best Indilinx-based drives (OCZ Vertex EX, OCZ Vertex Turbo), the read throughput, 4k and random IOPS–Windows’ biggest benefactors–are miles above anybody else on the market.

The C300 will debut in about two weeks in 128GB (MTFDDAC128MAG-1G1) and 256GB (MTFDDAC256MAG-1G1) flavors for $499 and $799, respectively. In the mean time, TweakTown and Benchmark Reviews have some excellent writeups to tide you over.

Comments

4 Feb 2010 ~ 3:35pm BuddyJ Yes please. Considering the sizes, the price isn't bad for something that fast.
4 Feb 2010 ~ 3:58pm MAGIC Ide like to couple one of these with the silverstone HDDboost. That side by side vidoe makes me want a SSD, bad.
4 Feb 2010 ~ 4:52pm jovocop I was thinking of getting the 100 GB one, until I saw the price tag. Opted for 2 OCZ Vertex instead, but I will be keeping on eye on the RealSSD, for when price drops.
4 Feb 2010 ~ 5:12pm Zuntar Holy crap!
4 Feb 2010 ~ 5:24pm Snarkasm That's ludicrous speed.

It's not significantly better than the Vertexes, as you mentioned, but I'd still like to see some operational comparisons between them.
4 Feb 2010 ~ 5:47pm Thrax It's write performance is no better than Vertexes, but its read performance is, and its random 4k/random random is nearly twice as fast. That's an enormous stat.
4 Feb 2010 ~ 6:27pm GooD I wonder, does Sata 6bps will work on Sata 2 motherboard ?

Also, What is the mb/s limit of sata II ?

Im asking cuz i know i wont change motherboard to have sata 3 support , and im wondering if this SSD drive still worth the price if im on a sata II board :P
8 Feb 2010 ~ 2:43am N30 @ GooD. Sata 3 (600) is backwards compatible with Sata 2 (300), of course you will only get 300mb/sec max.
There will be some cheapish pci-e cards soon with sata3.
8 Feb 2010 ~ 9:36am GooD Thankx
31 Aug 2010 ~ 2:11am Flashek I think, than 3.0 Gbit/s means (3000 Mbit/s) 375Mbyte/s (375Mb/s).