The Plextor M8Pe (512GB) SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on December 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
On the Light test, the Plextor M8Pe is faster than Intel's PCIe SSDs but slower than OCZ and Samsung. The M8Pe is about 2.6 times faster overall than the best SATA SSDs when the test is run on an empty drive, and about 80% faster when the test is run on a full drive.
There's very little variation in average service times among the PCIe SSDs (except for the Intel SSD 600p). The Plextor M8Pe is essentially tied with the Intel SSD 750 and OCZ RD400, and only slightly behind Samsung's PCIe SSDs.
When the test is run on an empty drive, the M8Pe is as good as any drive at keeping the number of high-latency outliers low. The M8Pe is more strongly affected than Samsung's drives when the test is run on a full drive.
The Light test is easy enough that the Intel 600P doesn't get bogged down, so the M8Pe is the least power-efficient of the M.2 PCIe SSDs.
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The_Assimilator - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Conclusion page: the paragraph "The performance differences between the Plextor M8Pe and the Toshiba OCZ RD400..." is repeated. BRO DO YOU EVEN EDITOR?Billy Tallis - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
I think the problem may have been too much editor. My browser was getting really laggy and unresponsive while I was finishing up the article and rearranging things.Threnx - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
Whoa there are still readers here? hah, I was cleaning out my bookmarks and saw anandtech. You realize all the talent left ages ago right? This site is dead. They're just riding on the name now...cbrownx88 - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
@Threnx - where do you go now since Anandtech is a shell of its former glory?TemjinGold - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
So... it basically loses across the board to the EVO but they want to charge more for it?Billy Tallis - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Keep in mind that the 960 EVO results here are for the 1TB model, and that kind of capacity advantage usually brings some performance advantage, too. But yeah, once the 960 EVO is actually shipping in volume, a lot of prices will probably have to come down. Unless the 960 EVO price goes up.close - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Prices for Samsung SSDs are rising due to the NAND shortage. If Plextor manages to resist this trend they might do well. After all most current workloads don't need anywhere near that kind of level of performance so a slight performance disadvantage is tolerable as long as it's reflected in the price.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
I wasn't aware of a NAND shortage. Do you happen to know the cause?Samus - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
It's simply a supply and demand issue. Other causes are manufacturing process adjustments and lower yield issues often associated with transitioning to new processes.However, the shortage isn't as dire as 'close' makes it seem. Drive prices aren't necessarily increasing because of the shortage, but they aren't falling as they should be with the density improvements associated with TLC and widespread adoption of 3D VNAND. Samsung drives are increasing in price because vendors have noticed sharper demand for them than other drive, and I'm sure you can guess why based on this article alone...I'm not a Samsung fan, but they are currently the most balanced SSD products on the consumer market.
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Ah that makes sense. Thanks!