AnandTech analyzes Crucial C300 SSD with Marvell controller in “The SSD Diaries.” You must read these conclusions.

Anand Lal Shimpi, the man behind the AnandTech.com Web site, has published an extended review of Crucial’s C300 SSD. Two things that make the Crucial C300 SSD somewhat unique are the use of a Marvell SSD controller chip paired with Crucial’s home-grown firmware. The online article is worthwhile for its extensive charts showing drive performance. You should know that the Crucial C300 drive performs pretty well. AnandTech reports that it outperforms “Intel's X25-M G2 or anything based on an Indilinx controller” and can outperform SSDs based on SandForce’s SSD controller chip depending on drive capacity, whether you’re using a 3- or 6-Gbps SATA controller, and other conditions.

However, writes Lal Shimpi, the Crucial C300 SSD is obviously a drive designed to rely on the recently implemented TRIM command. Using this command, drive performance stays relatively constant under a barrage of random writes. With operating systems that do not use the TRIM command--that’s everything but Microsoft Windows 7 or Linux Version 2.6.33--the drive quickly loses about two-thirds of its write performance. Check out the article for details.