Crucial P1 vs MX500

[Ehrix]

I'm looking for an ssd for black friday and I came across the crucial P1 1TB nvme m.2 and the crucial MX500 1TB NAND m.2 both for the same price. Is there a certain reason the P1 is the same price but has better read and write speeds than the MX500? 

[WereCat]

16 minutes ago, TheDeathDragon said:

I'm looking for an ssd for black friday and I came across the crucial P1 1TB nvme m.2 and the crucial MX500 1TB NAND m.2 both for the same price. Is there a certain reason the P1 is the same price but has better read and write speeds than the MX500? 

The P1 uses QLC flash vs TLC on the MX500. 

QLC has a lot lower endurance than TLC. 

 

But the P1 is NVMe vs SATA on the MX500 so that's why the speed difference. 

But the speed difference is there only if you copy large files, if you plan to install OS on it, the difference in performance will not be noticeable. 

 

If you really need cheap and good NVMe then consider checking the SX8200 Pro. 

[Juular]

30 minutes ago, WereCat said:

The P1 uses QLC flash vs TLC on the MX500. 

QLC has a lot lower endurance than TLC. 

 

But the P1 is NVMe vs SATA on the MX500 so that's why the speed difference. 

But the speed difference is there only if you copy large files, if you plan to install OS on it, the difference in performance will not be noticeable. 

 

If you really need cheap and good NVMe then consider checking the SX8200 Pro. 

It's not about endurance, they both have a plenty, you're not gonna exhaust 300 TB of writes. But QLC SSDs have very bad sustained write speed (100 MB\s). So yeah, i'd recommend to look into some NVMe TLC SSDs. Like HP EX920\950, Team MP34, ADATA SX8200 Pro\S11 Pro, Sabrent Rocket, Inland Premium, Corsair MP510, Mushkin Pilot etc, well, pretty much anything with TLC and on NVMe interface on it would be better than those two. Except for Intel 660p, ADATA SX6000 (non-Pro), HP EX900, Lexar NM500\600, Mushkin Helix, these are slow too.

[t666nu]

On 11/29/2019 at 8:46 AM, Juular said:

It's not about endurance, they both have a plenty, you're not gonna exhaust 300 TB of writes. But QLC SSDs have very bad sustained write speed (100 MB\s). So yeah, i'd recommend to look into some NVMe TLC SSDs. Like HP EX920\950, Team MP34, ADATA SX8200 Pro\S11 Pro, Sabrent Rocket, Inland Premium, Corsair MP510, Mushkin Pilot etc, well, pretty much anything with TLC and on NVMe interface on it would be better than those two. Except for Intel 660p, ADATA SX6000 (non-Pro), HP EX900, Lexar NM500\600, Mushkin Helix, these are slow too.

Here it says P1 has 1142MB/s sustained write speeds?? where did you get the 100MB/s?

https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-970-Evo-Plus-NVMe-PCIe-M2-250GB-vs-Crucial-P1-3D-NVMe-PCIe-M2-500GB/m711305vsm614152

Edited February 17, 2020 by t666nu

[Juular]

1 hour ago, t666nu said:

Here it says P1 has 1142MB/s sustained write speeds?? where did you get the 100MB/s?

https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-970-Evo-Plus-NVMe-PCIe-M2-250GB-vs-Crucial-P1-3D-NVMe-PCIe-M2-500GB/m711305vsm614152

Peak sustained write speed over 60s period. I.e on empty drive (because peak), 60s of writing at 1GB\s, that's 60GB of data, IIRC Crucial P1 has about 70-80GB of SLC cache for 500GB version. In short, userbenchmark aren't very accurate at benchmarking things (who would've thought). Also, data for Samsung 970 Evo Plus looks all sorts of wrong (especially that peak sustained write speed).

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-p1-nvme-ssd-qlc,5852-3.html

[NewMaxx]

3 hours ago, Juular said:

Peak sustained write speed over 60s period

The Crucial P1 is basically an Intel 660p with full DRAM. These drives have up to 128GB of dynamic SLC and 12GB of static SLC, the first decreases in the 0-75% full range while the latter is always available (i.e., after 75% fill). The P1's extra DRAM gives it better general write performance and it's more aggressive with emptying the cache but this can impact read performance. These drives rely on folding - the compression of SLC blocks into TLC - to the extent that all incoming data goes through the SLC cache first, rather than direct-to-QLC (i.e. the latter used by the Samsung 860 QVO or Sabrent Rocket Q). Folding is at best one-half speed of the native flash so this is quite slow indeed with QLC - as you surmised, in the 80-100 MB/s range. The bigger issue would probably be high latency in that condition, although if we're just talking file transfers then it's just a matter of sequential writes at low queue depth.

 

As for the 970 EVO Plus: 96L flash with good base (TLC) speed, utilizing hybrid cache (static + dynamic) but much smaller - 4GB + 18GB at 500GB, keeping in mind drives are slower at lower capacities due to less parallelization.

[Juular]

5 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

The bigger issue would probably be high latency in that condition, although if we're just talking file transfers then it's just a matter of sequential writes at low queue depth.

I do notice that with large file transfers through Windows file explorer tho, OS becomes quite unresponsive, almost like it's on HDD (Intel 660p).

Any update on Sabrent Q ? Does it perform better than Intel\Crucial QLCs ?

[NewMaxx]

5 minutes ago, Juular said:

I do notice that with large file transfers through Windows file explorer tho, OS becomes quite unresponsive, almost like it's on HDD (Intel 660p).

Any update on Sabrent Q ? Does it perform better than Intel\Crucial QLCs ?

Nathan over at Legit Reviews reviewed it a few weeks ago and it seems to perform as I expected. A reasonably small (24GB) cache with direct-to-QLC and fast 96L QLC should keep it responsive. Of course, it needs to come in significantly cheaper than the TLC Rocket to make sense.

[NewMaxx]

2 hours ago, Juular said:

I do notice that with large file transfers through Windows file explorer tho, OS becomes quite unresponsive, almost like it's on HDD (Intel 660p).

Any update on Sabrent Q ? Does it perform better than Intel\Crucial QLCs ?

I just got a hardware report from someone who bought the Q and they have 64L QLC in that one, which is disappointing. I expected 96L on these drives. It's not a huge difference (~10% performance) but it makes the Rocket Q a little less desirable in my opinion.