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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
47 Comments
View All Comments
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