The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 5, 2012 3:05 AM ESTPerformance Over Time and TRIM
When Plextor sent the drive in for review, they emphazised one thing: a technology they call "True Speed". Supposedly, its job is to guarantee a high performance experience throughout the lifetime of the drive, and even when the drive is at a dirty state. As this technology is firmware related, we don't know how it differs from what others (e.g. Intel and Crucial) have done.
First, lets get the base performance by running HD Tach on a clean drive:
In a clean state, we get 383MB/s read speeds and 329MB/s write speeds. Next we ran the drive through our torture test, which consists of 20 minutes of 4KB random writes (QD=32, 100% LBA space) run on a full drive:
The M3 is still able to manage an average write speed of ~163MB/s. However, the write speed drops to as low as 50MB/s for the first LBAs, while the peak performance is still easily over 300MB/s. Plextor does noticeably better than Crucial in this regard as the performance of the m4 dropped to an average of 35MB/s. However, it should also be noted that the M3 had a higher write speed to begin with.
I wasn't ready to let Plextor go this easily. To see how the "True Speed" technology really works, I secure erased the drive, filled it with sequential data and then tripled the amount of 4KB random writes to 60 minutes:
The amplitude of the graph is a lot smaller now and there are only two small peaks, compared to the previous graph with dozens of peaks. The performance drop is significant as we are looking at 50MB/s on average regardless of the LBA. At the lowest, the performance is 35-40MB/s. That's still better than the Crucial m4, however, even with three times the random data thrown at the M4.
Next I secure erased the drive, reran our 20 minute torture test and let the drive idle for 40 minutes:
It does recover pretty well and we are looking at almost as new performance. There are a few negative peaks where the write speed drops to ~130MB/s, but on average the performance is only 25MB/s short of clean performance.
Finally I formatted the drive to see how it responds to the ATA TRIM command:
And the performance is back to brand new.
These graphs show us that if you are running an operating system with TRIM support (e.g. Windows 7), then there is absolutely no problem with the Plextor M3. If you are running an OS with no official TRIM support for the SSD (e.g. Mac OS X), then a SandForce based SSD will still be a better choice in this regard. However, what I would like to note is that our torture test reflects an extreme usage case.
Even if you are an enthusiast or professional, it's unlikely that your usage model will put the drive in a similar state as our torture test. Our torture test is continuously writing 4KB random data across the drive; in the real world there is almost always some sequential data and idle time in between. As shown in the garbage collection graph, the M3 does not need hours of idle time to restore its performance, so it should maintain its performance pretty well even under an OS with no TRIM.
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ecuador - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
He he, I read the article before the update and it sounded to me like it was written by a 15 year old! Little known Plextor... lolGood thing you updated, but in general when commenting on a company for an article do a little google search in case you are missing something ;)
JarredWalton - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Just because you can google a company to read about them (Kristian had already done that -- note the paragraph about them being a subsidiary of Shinano Kenshi Corporation), it doesn't mean everyone out there is familiar with the company. I sort of laughed when Kristian said he hadn't head their name until a few months back, but then, there were plenty of companies I wouldn't have known a thing about when I was 17.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
My point is that Plextor has not been in the spotlight for years. I was just surprised when the name came up because I seriously had not heard much about them. I consider myself to be pretty updated when it comes to the SSD front but I still had not heard the name Plextor until a few months back. That's why I wrote what I wrote. In SSD context, Plextor can be a new name for many, or at least it was for me :-)I admit that I did not know about their success in the ODD market in the 90s but then again, I was still spoon-fed at that time :-P
christoi - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
On the second page, on the test setup it says "Intel Core i7-2500K." I assume it's an i5 from the 3.3ghz clock?Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Yeah, it's an i5. Thanks for the heads up, fixed it :-)BolleY2K - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
...are the 5 year warranty and the included version of Acronis True Image, which allows the user to easily clone his existing OS drive to the SSD.These two things are not included in the packages of most other SSDs on the market and in my opinion add to the value of the M3 package, so should be mentioned in the review.
Btw. I own the 128GB and am very pleased with it - easy installation (also due to the included software), good performance and entirely issue free so far. :-)
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
At least my version did not come with Acronis True Image. The included clone utility is called Echo and is made by NTI. Not that it matters as the tool worked flawlessly when I copied my boot drive to the M3 :-)BolleY2K - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Ah ok - I live in germany and over here you get Acronis. Well, as long as it works, it doesn´t matter how it is called I guess. ;-)I still think these 2 goodies should be mentioned and also kept in mind while discussing the price of the M3. Also the QA of these drives is very good - plextor states 20 hours of testing for every single SSD they ship and a RMA rate of 0,5%.
ckryan - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I picked up a Plextor M3P, and here you get NTI.I went to try it out, and it did not play nice with Acronis which was on my system. After settting it up, the system reboots and loads a linux partition to do the copy operation... well, it didn't work, and then I couldn't get past the linux boot on subsequent restarts.
I could just revert to a clone from a week prior on another SSD, but not everybody has it like that.
The NTI Echo probably works quite well if you don't already have another clone suite installed like acronis.
The M3P is totally bitchin' though.
Jocelyn - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I got my 256GB M3 for $290 in February and the 128GB often hits $150-$160. Anyway, Thanks for finally doing a review on the M3 and I <3 Toshiba Toggle Nand!!