PCIe SSD Faceoff: Samsung XP941 (128GB & 256GB) and OCZ RevoDrive 350 (480GB) Tested
by Kristian Vättö on September 5, 2014 3:00 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based – we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we are testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we have been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
While the average data rates of the 256GB XP941 and RevoDrive are not that impressive, the average service times are. The average service time of the 256GB XP941 is nearly half of the same capacity 850 Pro and the RevoDrive too is faster than any SATA SSD, though the 512GB XP941 is still faster. The service time emphasizes high queue depth performance, which is often the stumbling stone for slower and cheaper drives, and that in turn increases their average service time.
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vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
I understand that sentiment, but even in the release notes of 11 series of drivers, let alone 12, performance enhancements are claimed for some SSD scenarios and interfaces versus others. This chipset is 3+ years old. It does the reader a disservice not to give them realistic modern setups to give them the best idea of what they will realistically come across. PCIe SSDs were in their infancy when this testbed came out. Several of these drives might even have firmware updates that improves their standing.It just seems like this testing setup is ideal for the testing environment itself, not the reader.
Perhaps a compromise could be reached where the testbed is stabilized after maturity of a current or previous chipset and Operating system (say the first major service pack, or a year, whichever is sooner), so that errata/bugs can be worked out.
In any case, thanks for the efforts!
Kristian Vättö - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
SSD firmware updates are something we look at, as long as they claim performance improvements (I'm not going to spend a few days on testing if it just fixes an unrelated bug).Keep in mind that while we always try to prioritize our readers, the benchmarking must be humane to us too. If I switched the drivers every time there is an update, we would only have a couple of comparison points, which wouldn't do service to anyone.
Like I said, we have a new testbed with the latest drivers and that will actually be used for our new enterprise SSD suite. Unfortunately, the new testbed doesn't play nice with our Storage Benches and PCIe drives, so I can't transition the client suite until we get that figured out. Otherwise we would lose a major part of our benchmarks and I don't think anyone would want that.
CrazyElf - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Do you think that in the future, we will see the level of choice with M.2 SSDs that we get with SATA 3 SSDs?Right now it looks like Micron, Samsung, Plextor, and a few others have M.2 SSDs. With Z97 and X99 offering M.2 slots, this looks like a lot of promise, especially considering X99 M.2s are shipping with 32 Gb/s interfaces through PCI-E 3.0 x4.
Maybe not Ram disk speed, but still very fast.
Sunburn74 - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Why is it that the manufacturers of the revodrive have figured out how to make it universally bootable, but everyone else can't seem to do it?Kristian Vättö - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Others can do it (like Plextor did with the M6e) but the XP941 is an OEM product, so there is no need for Samsung to provide an universal driver since technically it should only be available as a pre-installed drive.The Von Matrices - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
From your wording in the article it sounds like the OCZ drive use an option ROM to become bootable. Is this true? If so that would be a huge disadvantage since these option ROMs slow down the boot process by 20-30 seconds, an eternity in the world of UEFI.Kristian Vättö - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
That is true, the OROM definitely adds 10-15 seconds to the boot time. However, that is not an issue if you sleep your computer like many people do nowadays.The Von Matrices - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
While I don't think you should add an OS boot benchmark, I think it is important to at least mention the extra time required for booting somewhere in the article since that will turn off a not inconsiderable of people from the product.KarlKaiser - Sunday, September 7, 2014 - link
er... the Revodrive won't boot OSX, so not really 'universally bootable'SantaAna12 - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Timely review. I too would like to know about its benefit to the average user: gaming, 7zip, video etc. I have read that these can run very hot? Some have placed a heatsink on the Samsung. Does this degrade the drive?