PCIe SSD Faceoff: Samsung XP941 (128GB & 256GB) and OCZ RevoDrive 350 (480GB) Tested
by Kristian Vättö on September 5, 2014 3:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Since we are dealing with two fairly different drives, I will split the conclusion into two by beginning with the XP941. The XP941 is still the fastest client SSD and while the 256GB model does not provide the same performance as the 512GB one, it is still faster than any SATA 6Gbps SSD by a hefty margin. The 128GB XP941 is a different story, though. It is not really faster than the 128GB 850 Pro because at such small capacity the performance is mostly NAND limited, except for large sequential read transfers where the SATA 6Gbps interface is the bottleneck.
The good news is that RamCity has lowered its pricing since May. The XP941 still carries a premium over SATA SSDs, but it is now more competitive in price at less than a dollar per gigabyte. For US-based customers, finding the XP941 in stock can be a bit difficult; Newegg has both the 128GB and 256GB models listed, but they're on backorder; meanwhile the 512GB model is in stock at Amazon, but only at a highly inflated price of $750.
| Price Comparison (9/4/2014) | |||||||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | ||||||
| Samsung SSD XP941 | $127 | $252 | $486 | - | |||||
| Plextor M6e | $120 | $220 | $420 | - | |||||
| OCZ RevoDrive 350 | - | $517 | $810 | $1,260 | |||||
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro | $130 | $200 | $400 | $700 | |||||
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $180 | $350 | $570 | |||||
The RevoDrive is a totally different case. The performance is only better in some corner cases where the drive is fed with high queue depth or large transfer data, and in most typical scenarios it is outperformed by SATA 6Gbps SSDs. In the end, the RevoDrive 350 is nothing more than a pre-built 4-drive RAID array, so it is only faster in cases where RAID in general is a benefit (e.g. heavily parallel IO workloads).
Not only is the RevoDrive relatively slow, it is also super expensive. For the price of the 240GB RevoDrive 350, you could get four 128GB 850 Pros with twice the total capacity and higher performance since the 850 Pro is faster than any single SandForce drive. The same goes for higher capacity RevoDrives too -- it is simply way more affordable to buy a bunch of SATA SSDs and build your own RAID array. Even if you do not know how to create a RAID array, I am sure you can find someone to do it for $50, in which case you would still save money and get a faster RAID array with better drives.
All in all, for those who are in the market for a PCIe SSD, the XP941 is the only serious option. It is the fastest client SSD on the market and as long as your motherboard includes boot support for it, it is the best client drive that money can buy at the moment. I am very excited to get my hands on the SM951 (and other native PCIe SSDs) because the XP941 is already great, but when you add PCIe 3.0, NVMe, and V-NAND to the mix it will be one hell of a drive.
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Riemenschneider - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
I like the M.2 form factor a lot, just a shame that there are so few ITX boards with support, not for FM2+ and also not for the SoC stuff :(. No real reason to go for a M.2 drive yet, though, but that is going to change as soon as the NVMe SSDs are going to be released.hojnikb - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
I wonder why OCZ didn't went with their barefoot controller (the one in vector150) instead of sandforce. Sandforce is getting really dated now and using it in a premium product like revodrive is kinda silly in 2014.themeinme75 - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
I would like you to add this drive to the review. It reads and writes at nearly 2GB/s.. i not positive it's bootable. It basically 4 ssd in raid. I wonder if someone is working on a pcie3 that would hold 4 1TB m.2 so you get 4tb bootable with like 4GB/s...Mushkin Enhanced Scorpion Deluxe MKNP44SC240GB-DX PCIe 240GB Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PCIe 2.0 x8 $456.31
Mushkin · Internal · 240 GB · Solid State
Other capacity options: 480GB ($700) 960GB ($1,071) 1920GB ($1,747)
TelstarTOS - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Still waiting for Intel 3600 test at low capacities (I think 400GB is the lowest) which has a decent pricepoint and it should be slightly better than the SP941 512GB.isa - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Looking forward to NVMe PCIe M.2 SSDs, but I'm really disappointed in the pricing so far: one can get a 2.5 inch SATA SSD for about $0.50/GB, and while I'd thought that the M.2 format would afford significant cost savings, these SSDs are over $1/GB. Is that just a temporary supply/demand artifact, or is there some kind of huge licensing cost or additional tech complexity costs that hit M.2 that doesn't hit 2.5 inch SATA?TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
A mix of it being brand new technology, low demand (there's, what, 3 non 2011 boards that use it, and a handful of laptops) vs the high demand for data 3 ( every computer made today) and a lack of manufacturers. Most are still making data drives, so those that make m.2 can command a price premium.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Data 3, not data 3. When will anandtech conceive an edit button?TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Sata is a word, android. Stop autocorrecting.Beany2013 - Sunday, September 7, 2014 - link
It's OK, it was clear from the context as to what you meant :)I think I'll be waiting for M.2 to become more commonplace before updating my current rig (A8-3870, 16gb RAM, SSD 830) then as there's unlikely to be any real performance/£ increase until the earth moving CPUs are dropped/replaced, and PCIe SSDs are more common/cheaper.
(Yes, I like my AMD hardware because I'm cheap and like lots of real threads)
The performance numbers we're seeing from these - effectively first generation - devices are very encouraging though, so I'm looking forward to that point in perhaps two years time when I can throw £500 at a build and get another machine that is hilariously quick for the money.
fredey - Sunday, September 7, 2014 - link
If I didn't already miss it I would like to see a raid round up the the revodrive 350 the mushkin skorpion deluxe and a standard sata 6Gbps setup with something along the lines of four samsung 850 pros in raid 0