The Great High-end SSD Shootout (2014 Edition)

SSDs in 2013 - The Year in Review

When we did this shootout last year, we remarked that prices of SSDs have fallen dramatically, to record lows even, making them more accessible to even mainstream users. In the past year, we saw prices of SSDs stabilizing and also noted several trends in the industry.

Although 2013 saw lesser new SSDs being released, we observed that these new drives are moving away from SandForce's very popular SF-2281 controller. SanDisk’s new Extreme II SSD, for instance, which used to be powered by SandForce's SF-2281 controller is now running on a Marvell controller.

We also saw the entry of Seagate into the consumer SSD space with their Seagate 600 SSD. Obviously, Seagate is, along with Western Digital, one of the two biggest manufacturers of mechanical hard disk drives and their entry into this space is an indication that the SSD market is too big for them to ignore.

Finally, towards the end of the year we saw OCZ file for bankruptcy and was subsequently acquired by flash memory giant Toshiba. Considering the number of players in the market, could this be the beginning of the consolidation of the SSD business as so many have predicted earlier? Only time will tell.

This year, we are pitting no less than eight of the fastest and newest drives against each other. Some of them might seem familiar to you, such as the Corsair Neutron GTX and OCZ Vector, but we are including these drives because they have been refreshed, either with new firmware or memory. To be clear, to make the cut, the drive has to be from the company’s high-end range, be introduced or refreshed within last year, offered in 240GB, 250GB or 256GB capacities and have a SATA 6Gbps interface.

Here are the list of contenders:

• Corsair Neutron GTX
• Crucial M500
• OCZ Vector 150
• Plextor M5 Pro Extreme
• Samsung SSD 840 Pro
• SanDisk Extreme II
• Seagate 600
• Toshiba Q-Series

In the following pages, we will be describing the drives in greater detail.

Corsair Neutron GTX

Controller: Link_A_Media LM87800

Memory type: 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND (Toshiba)

Accessories: 3.5-inch HDD bay adapter

Z-height: 7mm

Our defending champion is back and this year Corsair has refreshed its flagship SSD with the latest 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND from Toshiba - last year’s drive had memory from Toshiba but was manufactured using a 24nm process. Otherwise, it retains the same Link_A_Media LM87800 controller and comes packaged with a 3.5-inch HDD bay adapter. The Neutron GTX wowed us last year with blazing fast performance and reasonable price tag and it will be interesting to see if they can repeat the feat this year.

Crucial M500

Controller: Marvell 88SS9187

Memory type: 20nm MLC NAND (Micron)

Accessories: 9.5mm bumper

Z-height: 7mm

Crucial is the consumer arm of Micron Technology, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of flash memory. The M500 is their latest flagship drive and it uses Marvell’s newest 88SS9187 controller - last year’s M4 drive used the older Marvell 88SS9174. Interesting to note also is that this is the first drive in the world to use Micron’s new 128Gbit MLC NAND die. The increased storage density will help bring down costs, and while the M500 was not designed to be a speed demon, it is expected to offer decent performance at a substantially lower cost.

OCZ Vector 150

Controller: Indilinx Barefoot 3

Memory: 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND (Toshiba)

Accessories: 3.5-inch HDD bay adapter and Acronis cloning utility

Z-height: 7mm

It is not very often that we see a brand new SSD controller, so imagine our excitement when we first reviewed the Vector back in November 2012. The drive showed a lot of promise and was very quick on certain benchmarks, but was a little inconsistent and extremely pricey. The Vector received a refresh last year in the form of Toshiba’s latest 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND and firmware updates, otherwise, the rest of the drive is unchanged.

Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme

Controller: Marvell 88SS9187

Memory: 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND (Toshiba)

Accessories: 3.5-inch HDD bay adapter & NTI SSD utility

Z-height: 7mm

The Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme is an interesting SSD. It began life as the “simple” M5 Pro, but through firmware updates gradually became known as the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme. It was also one of the first drives to use Toshiba’s 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND. Firmware differences aside, the other difference between the M5 Pro and M5 Pro Xtreme is that the latter features 16 NAND chip packages instead of 8.

Samsung SSD 840 Pro

Controller: Samsung MDX

Memory: 21nm Toggle-Mode MLC NAND (Samsung)

Accessories: Samsung data migration utility

Z-height: 7mm

Is there a drive with a greater reputation for performance than the Samsung SSD 840 Pro? When we reviewed it last year, we were disappointed with its inconsistent performance but noted that it had potential. It is also one of the few drives to be developed completely in-house as all critical components (controller, memory and firmware) were all developed solely by Samsung. Let’s hope that it will fare better with a new test system and testing methodology.

SanDisk Extreme II

Controller: Marvell 88SS9187

Memory: 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND (SanDisk)

Accessories: 9.5mm bumper

Z-height: 7mm

In the middle of last year, SanDisk updated its flagship SSD (SanDisk Extreme) with the all new Extreme II. It was a major overhaul because while its predecessor used SandForce’s popular SF-2281 controller, SanDisk opted for Marvell’s new 88SS9187 controller for the Extreme II. Memory is SanDisk’s own 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND. The drive also features a special twist - SanDisk’s own nCache technology. This aims to improve random write performance by having a portion of memory operate in SLC mode.

Seagate 600

Controller: Link_A_Media LM87800

Memory type: 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND (Toshiba)

Accessories: None

Z-height: 7mm (also available in 5mm)

Seagate is one of the biggest names in storage and has shipped over two billion hard disk drives. The Seagate 600 is their maiden high-end consumer SSD and we found it to be a solid offering when we reviewed it last year. The ingredients are highly similar to the Corsair Neutron GTX - Link_A_Media controller and Toshiba Toggle-Mode NAND - but the firmware is unique to Seagate.

Toshiba Q-Series Pro

Controller: Toshiba TC358790XBG

Memory type: 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND (Toshiba)

Accessories: 9.5mm bumper

Z-height: 7mm

Toshiba is one of the world’s largest NAND memory manufacturers behind IMFT (Intel) and Samsung, but strangely, it has not made much of a push in the consumer space until recently. Like Samsung, the Q-Series Pro is a completely in-house developed drive featuring Toshiba’s own TC358790XBG controller and 19nm Toggle-Mode NAND. The fact that Toshiba has its own NAND foundry means that it gets to cherry pick the absolute best chips. How this will affect performance will be interesting to see.

Test Setup

The drives will be tested on our recently revamped storage testbed. The main changes are the faster Core i5-2500K processor and an accompanying Z77 motherboard which has native Thunderbolt connectivity.

• Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P8Z77 Pro Thunderbolt (Intel Z77 chipset)
• 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory
• MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
• Windows 7

We have also revised our benchmarks, ditching older benchmarks such as HD Tune and also including an all new timing test to better evaluate the drive’s real world performance.

The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

• AS-SSD benchmark 1.7.4739
• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
• PCMark 7 (Storage suite)
• Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
• Timing Tests (Cold start, Reboot, Apps Launching)

The full list of drives tested, in case you have forgotten (note that to keep the playing field level, these drives are all sporting 240 / 250 / 256GB of storage):

• Corsair Neutron GTX
• Crucial M500
• OCZ Vector 150
• Plextor M5 Pro Extreme
• Samsung SSD 840 Pro
• SanDisk Extreme II
• Seagate 600
• Toshiba Q-Series

Given that these drives represents the best of the best, we are expecting a close fight. The enthusiast favorites will obviously be the Samsung SSD 840 Pro, OCZ Vector 150 and last year’s winner, the Corsair Neutron GTX. The Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme is a fan favorite and could throw up a few surprises. The Toshiba Q-Series Pro could be a dark horse too, given Toshiba’s reputation and standing in the flash memory industry.

Timing Tests

New to our evaluation of SSDs is how they perform in real world everyday situations, namely booting up from a cold start, reboot and launching applications. As for the applications used, we made the drives launch 11 applications from the Adobe CS6 suite of utilities simultaneously, which includes resource intensive applications such as Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro amongst others. As a point of reference, a 7200rpm mechanical hard disk would take over 5 minutes to open all the applications.

In our timing tests, we have found that the difference in performance is very marginal. Even so, if we were to analyze the results closely, we can see that some drives are faster than others. The standout drive is arguably the Samsung SSD 840 Pro as its timings for all three operations were amongst the quickest. Other drives that were as quick were the SanDisk Extreme II , Seagate 600 and the Toshiba Q Series Pro. On the other end of the spectrum, we find the Crucial M500 and, surprisingly, our last year champion the Corsair Neutron GTX, which recorded the longest timings for all three tasks.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 Results

CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data.

On CrystalDiskMark, it was clear that the Samsung SSD 840 Pro was our top performer as it recorded the highest speeds for almost all workloads. In fact, the only time it lost top spot was on the 4K workload, where its write speeds of 139.5MB/s was bested by the Crucial M500 and OCZ Vector 150. Otherwise, it achieved top spot for all the other workloads. The other stand out performers include OCZ Vector, which finished second comfortably. Unsurprisingly, the overall weakest performer was the Crucial M500. 

AS SSD 1.7.4739 Results

AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SandForce SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first, which takes away one of the strong advantages of this controller. Therefore this is a useful benchmark because drives that use the SF-2281 controller or similar, don't gain an upper hand.

The Samsung SSD 840 Pro put in yet another impressive showing on AS SSD and so did the OCZ Vector 150. The two are in the highest tier for this benchmark. Following which is Plextor’s M5 Pro Xtreme, which did well but was a little lackluster in the 4K workload. The Corsair Neutron GTX, SanDisk Extreme II, Seagate 600 and Toshiba Q-Series all did equally well and posted impressive speeds, but the Samsung, OCZ and Plextor drives were truly on a different level of performance altogether. 

PCMark 7 Results

PCMark 7 is a benchmarking suite from FutureMark that evaluates the performance of Windows 7 machines. It tests a wide range workloads and aspects of the system ranging from computation, image and video manipulation and storage. We’ll be looking solely at the storage test here.

Looking at the graphs, it is immediately obvious that the Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Toshiba Q-Series Pro are our two top performers. Trailing just slightly behind are the OCZ Vector 150 and the two Marvell-powered drives, the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme and SanDisk Extreme II. Corsair’s Neutron GTX and Seagate’s 600, which utilize the Link_A_Media LM87800 were both disappointing as they only scored marginally better than the last-placed Crucial M500. 

Iometer Results (Part 1)

Lastly, we put the drives through the rigorous grind of Iometer, with different workloads and I/O queue depths. We have chosen to show results from a queue depth of 1 to 5 as this better represents the workloads a typical consumer might face.

After analyzing the various data points from Iometer and grading each drive's performance in each sub-test, it was clear that the Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme were the two top performing drives. They may not top the charts in every test, but as a whole after ranking them in each test, both of these drives came out tops. Just behind them are the Corsair Neutron GTX and Seagate 600. The OCZ Vector 150’s erratic performance prevented it from getting a higher standing, while the Toshiba Q-Series Pro’s recorded IOPs scores were middling.

Iometer Results (Part 2)

Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Unsurprisingly, the drives that recorded the lowest response times were the Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme, which explains their outstanding performance on the previous page. We can also see that the OCZ Vector 150 exhibited inconsistent response times. And for the Crucial M500, its low 64k streaming write performance can be directly attributed to its high response time as seen in the chart below. 

One Shall Stand

2013 was an interesting year for SSDs as we saw many new developments. One interesting trend to note is the reduced reliance on SandForce’s SF-2281 controller. In our previous year’s roundup, six out of ten drives were powered by the SF-2281 controller. This year, however, saw zero SandForce drives entering our mega high-end SSD shootout. It seems that drive makers are realizing that in order to attract users and buyers, they need to differentiate themselves to stand out and that cannot be achieved with the SF-2281’s ho-hum performance, especially in the light of new controllers from Marvell, Samsung, OCZ and now, Toshiba.

Another trend is the increased popularity of drives using Toggle-Mode MLC NAND memory from Toshiba. With the exception of Crucial, Samsung and SanDisk, who each have their own NAND foundries, the rest of the drives were using memory sourced from Toshiba.

Now on to the results and here are the scores of the drives, following which we will provide our analysis on the individual drives. Do note that we have revised the ratings of some of the drives that were previously reviewed to better factor in the newer price points at this point of time, improved performance from newer firmware and a refreshed comparison. This is because the previous review ratings and findings are applicable for products reviewed at that point of time. All revisions have been noted in brackets for proper clarity and accountability.

The Samsung SSD 840 Pro was our winner because not only was it fast, recording the highest speeds across our benchmarks, it was very consistent in its showing too. And while it may come with zero hardware accessories, it does have Samsung’s own data migration tool and the Samsung Magician software, which lets users easily update firmware and optimize the drive’s performance. Their data migration tool is also extremely easy to use and is a boon for novices who want to switch to an SSD. Hence, while it may be the costliest drive in this shootout, its high price is justified by its wickedly fast performance and features.

OCZ may have made headlines for going bankrupt and subsequently being acquired by Toshiba lately, but the company obviously knows a thing or two about making fast SSDs. The birth of its Indlinx Barefoot 3 controller was forward thinking in many respects and we can see that the Vector 150 was very easily one of the fastest drives in this shootout, even if it often came in second to the Samsung SSD 840 Pro. It was also one of the few drives to come with a 3.5-inch HDD bay adapter and a disk cloning utility for easy setup.

Plextor is a favorite amongst enthusiasts for performance and reliability and the M5 Pro Xtreme, its current flagship, did not disappoint. Overall performance was very good and it easily distinguishes itself as one of the quickest drives. Along with the OCZ Vector 150, it was one of the few drives to come with a 3.5-inch HDD bay adapter and disk cloning utility. Sadly, it was ultimately outclassed by the Samsung SSD 840 Pro.

Our last year’s winner, the Corsair Neutron GTX, was somewhat disappointing as it was thoroughly outclassed by the Samsung, OCZ and Plextor drives. Furthermore, it does not help that while competitors have lowered their prices, Corsair has kept theirs relatively constant. Nevertheless, it is still a solid drive, but know that there are better alternatives around.

SanDisk’s new flagship drive, the Extreme II, has benefited from moving to a Marvell controller. As we have noted in our original review, performance has improved significantly. Sadly for it, it finds itself in the unenviable company of some very fast drives from Samsung, OCZ and Plextor. It does not help that it comes without any accessories whatsoever.

Even though the Seagate 600 cannot quite match the heavyweights in this tightly contested category, all things considered, it is a fine first attempt at a high-end consumer-grade SSD from the storage giant.

Although Toshiba is a newcomer in our local market, we found their flagship Q-Series Pro drive to be somewhat of a dark horse. With its in-house developed TC358790XBG controller and boasting the finest memory chips from its own foundry, the Q-Series Pro offered decent performance and at an attractive price. It will be interesting to see how Toshiba follows up on this next, especially since it has acquired OCZ.

Rounding up our shootout was the Crucial M500. To be fair, while the M500 is Crucial’s flagship drive, it has been positioned by the company as a mainstream drive for the budget-conscious, in fact its pricing reflects that as it is the most affordable drive, by far. If you are on a tight budget, the M500 is highly worthy of consideration. 

	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down
	Click here for detailed results break-down

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