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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/6125/crucial-v4-ssd
Crucial's v4 SSD: Affordable 3Gbps SATA SSD based on Phison's PS3105 Controller
by Kristian Vättö on July 31, 2012 6:00 PM EST
Crucial's m4 SSD has been extremely popular. It's priced very competitively and although it's not the fastest SATA 6Gb/s SSD, its performance is still very good. Crucial has now added a new v4 model to their SSD portfolio. While the m4 is already affordable, Crucial's goal with the v4 series is to attract more mainstream users with even lower prices. To make this possible, the v4 is a 3Gbps SATA drive based on Phison's PS3105 controller.
The Phison name might not ring a bell for most people, but they have in fact been in the flash memory business for longer than many of today's big names. Phison claims that they have shipped over 500 million NAND flash controllers, but the key here is that Phison has primarily focused on making controllers for USB flash drives and memory cards. Phison has made SSD controllers for several years, too, but their offerings have never been able to really compete with other controllers in the market.
Capacity | 32GB | 64GB | 128GB | 256GB |
NAND | Micron 25nm synchronous MLC NAND | |||
Controller | Phison PS3105 | |||
Sequential Read | 200MB/s | 230MB/s | 230MB/s | 230MB/s |
Sequential Write | 60MB/s | 100MB/s | 175MB/s | 190MB/s |
4K Random Read | 10K IOPS | 10K IOPS | 10K IOPS | 10K IOPS |
4K Random Write | 1.2K IOPS | 2.4K IOPS | 4K IOPS | 4K IOPS |
MSRP | $50 | $70 | $100 | $190 |
Affordability comes at a price. While sequential performance is okay for a SATA 3Gb/s SSD, random read/write speeds are circa 2009. On paper it's still better than what hard drives offer, but not exactly what you would expect to see from a new SSD in 2012. Pricing is obviously very good, especially when noting that the prices listed in the table are suggested retail prices, which tend to be higher than final street prices. We have asked Crucial for a review sample, so stay tuned to find out if it's worth it to cheap out or pay a bit more for a faster drive.
Source: Crucial Press Release