The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 5, 2012 3:05 AM ESTFinal Words
Let's be frank: I'm surprised. When I first got the Plextor M3, I wasn't expecting much from it. A Marvell based SSD from a smaller, somewhat unknown SSD brand is not too promising. If this had been a SandForce based SSD, then we all know what the performance would be like since all OEMs except Intel use the stock firmware. However, Marvell's controllers require a lot more work as the stock firmware that Marvell provides is in need of work. Having your own firmware team is a must if you plan on competing anywhere other than the low-end market. That requires capital, which can be an obstacle for a small firm. With Plextor being a subsidiary of a massive company, they should have the capital they need, and judging by the peformance results, they do.
The Plextor M3 isn't the fastest drive we have tested, but it comes in very close in many tests. It's clearly the fastest Marvell based SSD and it beats its Marvell siblings quite handily in most metrics. SandForce has been and still is extremely fast, but what Plextor has shown is that Marvell's controllers can keep up with SandForce when equipped with great firmware.
I've only really got two complaints. The first one is Plextor's pricing. I think Plextor may be pricing themselves out of competition in the smaller capacities. While the price difference with other brands in 64GB and 128GB capacities is only about $15 on average, that's quite a lot when put into perspective. In percentages, the 64GB M3 is 16% and the 128GB M3 is 9% more expensive than the other drives on average. If you could save 10% on each component in a new system, most people will opt for pricing over brand name.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (4/2/2012) | ||||
| 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |
| Plextor M3 | $110 | $180 | $340 | $660 |
| Crucial m4 | $88 | $155 | $315 | $630 |
| Intel 520 Series | $110 | $180 | $345 | $800 |
| Samsung 830 Series | $105 | $185 | $300 | $780 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | $90 | $178 | $340 | $770 |
In my opinion, the M3 would be a lot more attractive if Plextor lowered the prices of 64GB and 128GB models by even $10. 64GB and 128GB capacities are often the most popular capacities right now (as spending $300+ on a single SSD is quite rare), so if you want to be competitive, that's the niche you should focus in. Plextor could even increase the pricing on their higher capacity drives while still remaining competitive. Then again, perhaps Plextor is hoping to skip directly to the more lucrative 256GB and 512GB market, as the lower capacity market is already quite cutthroat.
My second complaint is that reviewing the M3 made me lust for something better, and it's called the M3 Pro. The controller is the same Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 but Plextor has taken the firmware one step further and this has resulted in better performance. I'm not going to go into detail about the M3 Pro here, but it reportedly provides up to 540MB/s read and 450MB/s write speeds along with random read of 75K IOPS and 69K IOPS random write. Hopefully we will be able to get our hands on a review sample soon.
Overall, Plextor M3 is a good performer - and we didn't notice any issues during our testing. It's fast in every aspect, has good gargabe collection, and isn't too power hungry. There is one big unknown though: Reliability. Current generation Marvell based SSDs in general have been fairly reliable, especially when put against SandForce, but firmware plays such a big role with the Marvell controller that you can't really know for sure.
Compatibility and reliability can take months to months to truly understand, so as always proceed with caution. There are great, known good solutions on the market at competitive prices already so there's no need to take a risk on an SSD before its reliability has been proven.
In any case, it's good to see that Marvell's controller still has legs.
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jwilliams4200 - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
And still you are avoiding the issue, which is your reviews have been stating that Sandforce SSDs have better steady-state performance than other SSDs like the Plextor M3, when you have no objective test results to back up such statements.I provided links to two other reviews that showed that the Plextor M3 has substantially better steady-state performance than several Sandforce SSDs. Those reviews (mostly) used the recommendations in the industry standard SNIA SSD test protocols.
All you have is arbitrary measurements, and NOT EVEN THE SAME TESTS RUN ON the Plextor M3 and Sandforce SSDs, and you make the claim that Sandforce is better. That is really not at all credible.
Such misleading states are doing an injustice to your loyal readers. Please do the right thing and correct your misleading claims about the relative steady-state performance of Sandforce SSDs, and also start work on developing an objective, consistently-applied steady-state test for future reviews.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Neither of the reviews you linked to provided steady state data for client workloads.Keep in mind that we run a ton of data internally that shapes our conclusions.
Here's a chart of high queue depth, steady state performance (sequential precondition, 4KB random write QD32):
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5719/45462...
The precondition is with incompressible data (iometer 1.1.0-rc1, fully random data pattern) as is the 4KB random write pass.
I'm not sure how others measure steady state random write but most controllers, with standard 7% spare area, fall off significantly after being exposed to random writes for an extended period of time.
Take care,
Anand
jwilliams4200 - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
The reviews I linked to follow the industry-standard SNIA guidelines for measuring steady-state performance, at least, an abbreviated version of the guidelines.In contrast to anandtech.com, which has completely arbitrary non-random workloads, in violation of the SNIA guidelines. Even worse, anandtech.com runs different tests on Sandforce SSDs than on non-Sandforce SSDs, and then claims that one SSD is better than another based on the results of different tests!
That is highly misleading and doing an injustic to your readers. anandtech.com really needs to do the right thing here.
rw1986 - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Jwilliams -- can you offer any supporting evidence to your claim that the Everest 2 is a "rebadged Marvell 88SS9187"? You mention this in several threads but you have not offered any evidence to support that notion...why should we believe you?jwilliams4200 - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
For those who are not familiar with the SNIA SSD testing protocols and specifications:http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/standards/curr...
http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi/pts
kyuu - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Yeah, we get it. Thanks.Myself, I think that Anand's finding on low write amplification on the Sandforce drives after long-term, real-world usage is more important, and more relevant, than some arbitrary and artificial benchmark standard. Just because some organization says such and such doesn't mean that any alternative is automatically bunk, or that reviewers aren't credible if they don't follow their procedures to the tee.
jwilliams4200 - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
Actually, it does mean that reviews are not credible if they don't follow the appropriate SNIA SSS guidelines. The SNIA SSS test specifications were developed by contributors from more than 20 companies in the industry and were carefully reviewed and compiled to form an objective standard for characterization of the performance of solid state storage devices.The reviews from anandtech are not credible at all, because they do not follow any objective standards at all, let alone the SNIA SSS protocols. Anand even admitted that they do not even run the exact same tests on all SSDs. This makes the results completely arbitrary and unreliable.
LokutusofBorg - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
You're a walking, talking example of logical fallacies. And you lost all credibility when you claimed the Vertex 4 is a Marvell controller without proof.Anand has been setting the bar for SSD analysis and testing for years now, and you suddenly come into a comments thread and start sounding the warning that his tests are flawed?
The TRIM/torture tests in every review obviously don't try to compare SSDs against each other. All other tests are objective and run the same on each SSD being compared in the graphs. Anand clearly stated this, and you deceptively or ignorantly misinterpreted what he said. Anybody with half a brain reading these comments can see that you need to spend less time typing and more time reading.
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5741/ocz-confirms-oc...Bobsy - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Am I glad to see these comments about Plextor being well-known and highly reputable. I remember upgrading my 486 DX2-66 computer with a Plextor optical drive (4X read-only) that I had paid $400. Plextor hardware was leaps and bounds ahead of anything else at the time. The opening comments from the author made me smile and it was obvious that the author was a young person. It is true that we have not heard about Plextor much in quite some time, at least not in terms of their products being the best.