The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 5, 2012 3:05 AM ESTRandom and Sequential Read/Write Speed
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews. Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). We perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. We use both standard pseudo randomly generated data for each write as well as fully random data to show you both the maximum and minimum performance offered by SandForce based drives in these tests. The average performance of SF drives will likely be somewhere in between the two values for each drive you see in the graphs. For an understanding of why this matters, read our original SandForce article.
Plextor M3 provides very good 4KB random read performance. Looking at the Crucial m4 that uses the same Marvell controller, the Plextor M3 is 47% faster in random performance, so Plextor has clearly paid attention to their firmware.
Random write performance is not as great as random read but still quite good enough for most workloads. This time Crucial's m4 comes out 33% faster than the M3, while the SF-2281 drives are all faster as well—write less data thanks to realtime compression and data deduplication techniques and your write speeds should generally be faster.
Switching the queue depth to 32 shows the difference between SandForce and non-SandForce quite well. SandForce is in its own class but among the Marvell SSDs, the Plextor M3 is the fastest. It's important to note that only heavy I/O workloads use queue depths that reach 32; most usage models don't go over 5.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we ran a one minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
Sequential read speed is identical to Crucial m4 and Corsair P3, and good if not class leading for a SATA 6Gbps SSD.
In sequential write speeds, the M3 is once again the fastest Marvell based SSD and is only a few percent behind SandForce based SSDs.
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Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Oops! Thanks, fixed it now. I added the Vertex 4 scores right before this went live so that's why Vertex 4 is not included in any of the analyses.wvh - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Back at the end of the '90s we used to burn a lot of CDs at university, and only the Plextors lasted and rarely burned coasters. It was the brand to have. In fact, the only writer that hasn't broken down on me yet is my Plextor.This isn't a shill ad – it's just a CD-writer after all – I'm just surprised to hear you've never heard of Plextor.
hrrmph - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I may have missed it, but more emphasis on the inclusion (or lack) of toolbox software and what functions it provides would be appreciated. Preferably near the beginning of the review.When I look at ranking SSDs, the inclusion of toolbox software that supports Secure Erase and possibly even 'settable spare area' is important to me.
I find manual (non-toolbox) methods of Secure Erase to be overly complicated and time-consuming.
So the inclusion of toolbox software that supports Secure Erase, and thus easy maintainability is important.
Settable spare area is also nice, because I'm willing to buy an SSD that is the next size up just to get some more spare area, because reliability is extremely important to me.
So when reading a review, while it's nice to know that the manufacturer took the time to provide good firmware and good validation (I'm not sure that validation was well-covered in this review either), it's also very nice if I can quickly 'suss out' whether the manufacturer took the time to make a good toolbox.
To my knowledge, only Intel, OCZ, and Samsung provide a toolbox that allows for easy Secure Erase from inside Windows, assuming the drive is connected to a machine as a secondary drive.
Similarly, I think that only Samsung is allowing settable spare area in their toolbox.
I usually eliminate OCZ from consideration these days because Intel and Samsung provide very adequate alternatives, and most importantly, I saw OCZ forum moderators horribly and publicly abusing some of the other OCZ customers. So while I wasn't abused by OCZ when I was a customer of theirs, I saw the potential.
Coming back to reviews, AT still writes the best reviews in my opinion. I like the non-emotional tone, and the long length, detail, and insightful analysis included in the reviews make them stand out from the crowd.
Other review sites tend to miss even basic points, or worse, they get breathlessly emotional and sensationalist over small differences in the various products. I think AT knows when something is worth getting worked up over, and when it's just run of the mill.
My understanding of the review, is that the Plextor M3 256GB is run of the mill.
I hope I'm not missing something here :).
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
i agree wholeheartedly - Samsung's toolbox is definitely the new gold standard here. I've been pushing folks behind the scenes to ramp up the quality of their options as well. I want to start paying more attention to it as it's a huge part of the user experience.Take care,
Anand
Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Unfortunately, there is no toolbox software included in Plextor M3. I have to say I'm not a fan of secure erase either, especially during write tests because this is starting to feel like work!I'll definitely try to concentrate more on the software in future reviews as several readers have requested it :-)
Coup27 - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
I'm a massive Samsung fan and I have a contact there who says Samsung will be releasing an updated ssd magician either this month or next which will also report ssd life like Intels do. Think they realised disabling the smart values to do it yourself was a mistake, esp if u want to put one in a server.cooldadd - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Kristian, I commend your writeup. New and capable talents are welcome in this arena... You will certainly have a chorus of voices with earlier/other perspectives, but they in their own way will bring you "up to date" on history prior to your entry into the mix!We are living in an amazing frenzy of technical advancement. Thirty years into the development of the telephone, for instance, not only would few people have been able to have technical discussions over its progress, but there was no popularly-available medium in which to discuss it!
I discovered AnandTech when it was new, sixteen years into my mainframe career, started by a young person like yourself who happened have a sharp technical curiosity and an ability to write well. I hope your contributions will follow in similar fashion.
Bozo - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
I must be getting old...Back when burnable CDs came out you needed a SCSI burner like 'Smart & Friendly' to make more good CDs than coasters. Then Plextor introduced one of the first PCI burners that actually made more good CDs than coasters. It was the CD burner to have if you were serious about making usable CDs.
I feel old.
sbmeirow - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
If you haven't heard of Plextor, then you are a newbie, and I don't read articles written by n00b's.Coup27 - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Idiot.