Review: Plextor M6 Pro (256GB)

by Tarinder Sandhu on 9 October 2014, 13:10

Tags: Plextor

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Testing Methodology

Test Bench

CPU Intel Core i7-4770K (3.5GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
Motherboard Asus Z97-A
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2x8GB) DDR3 @ 1,866MHz
Storage Controllers Intel Z97 PCH (SATA 6Gbps, AHCI)
Graphics Integrated HD 4600 Graphics
Power Supply Corsair AX760i
Operating System Windows 8.1 (64-bit)

Comparison Drive Configurations

  Total Capacity Controller Firmware Interface
Plextor M6 Pro 256GB Marvell 88SS9187 1.01 SATA 6Gbps
SK hynix SH910A 256GB LAMD LM87800AA 10103L00 SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Force LX 512GB SM2246EN 1.0 SATA 6Gbps
Crucial M500 240GB Marvell 88SS9187 MU02 SATA 6Gbps

Benchmarks

ATTO Disk Benchmark The freeware ATTO benchmark provides basic sequential speed results for both read and write operations. Using the default queue depth of four, we record read and write speeds during 1MB transfers.
CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark provides various storage benchmarks, but we're interested in the returned 32-thread 4K performance numbers to see how well the drives fare when tasked with numerous small transfers.
Iometer Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement tool originally developed by Intel. To measure a drive's I/O performance, we set the benchmark to run Database, File Server and Workstation profiles over varying queue depths.
PCMark 8 PCMark 8's storage test is a collection of workloads that isolate the performance of the PC's storage system. The Expanded Tests dig deeper into performance by looking at how the drives respond when in a degraded, steady and recovery state.