Note: This article was first published on 15th November 2016.
These four drives are the newest and fastest SSDs consumers can buy today.
Lightning Flash Drives
SSDs have come a long way. They used to be extremely expensive playthings for hardcore enthusiasts. But now, they are so affordable and ubiquitous that is almost unthinkable for anyone to still be chugging along on a system that uses mechanical hard drives.
However, as we explained in our PCIe SSD shootout earlier this year. Not all SSDs are built equal. SATA-based SSDs are no doubt many times faster than your traditional spinning hard disk drives, but they are limited by the SATA 6Gbps interface. The fastest SSDs today use the PCIe interface, specifically PCIe 3.0 x4. This standard offers up to 984MB/s of bandwidth per lane, so with four lanes, you are looking at close to 4GB/s of bandwidth. That’s six times the bandwidth of SATA 6Gbps.
But in our last shootout, you’ll see that not all SSD manufacturers have drives that support this ultra-fast interface. In fact, only two of them did, the other two were using slower PCIe 2.0 interfaces, and their performance weren’t competitive at all. Things have changed in the past couple of months.
Today, all of the major SSDs brands have realized the importance of supporting the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and have released products that support it. As a result, this shootout will be a much more keenly contested affair. We have the previously reviewed OCZ RD400 and Samsung SSD 960 Pro, and they will be joined by the new ADATA XPG SX8000 and the Plextor M8Pe. Let’s begin with the new ADATA XPG SX8000.
ADATA XPG SX8000
The ADATA XPG SX8000 is one of the newest SSDs in the market to make use of a controller from Silicon Motion.
ADATA is no stranger to the SSD scene. After all, the Taiwanese-based company is one of the world’s largest purveyors of flash-based memory products. The company’s roots are in DRAM modules, but it has recently made huge inroads in manufacturing USB flash drives, memory cards, and both internal and external SSDs.
The XPG SX8000 is the company’s latest flagship consumer SSD and like the rest of the drives, it supports PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and the NVMe protocol. However, it is a bit special because it is one of the first SSDs outside of Samsung to use 3D MLC NAND. 3D NAND differs from traditional planar NAND in that its memory cells are stacked upon one another. Although it did not disclose the source of its 3D MLC NAND, the NAND chips on our drive reveal that it is from Micron.
ADATA’s choice of controller is interesting, because instead of going for the tested and proven Marvell 88SS1093, they have gone with Silicon Motion’s SM2260. Like ADATA, Silicon Motion is not new to the SSD scene, but up until recently, their controllers have only been used in industrial SSD applications. In any case, the SM2260 is Silicon Motion’s new high-end controller and it has been designed to take advantage of the enhanced performance and reliability of 3D NAND. Though the controller supports hardware encryption, it is presently not enabled on the drive yet. However, ADATA told us that there are plans to enable this via a future firmware update.
The ADATA XPG SX8000 uses a Silicon Motion SM2260 SSD controller.
The XPG SX8000 also features SLC caching, which dedicates portions of its memory to work in a single-cell level mode to boost performance. It’s a pretty old caching technique that many TLC NAND SSDs employ to boost read and especially write speeds. As for performance, ADATA is claiming sequential read speeds in excess of 2GB/s, and sequential write speeds beyond 1GB/s, which is respectable and comparable to its rivals. However, random read and write performance is claimed to be just up to 100,000 IOPs and 140,000 IOPs respectively, which is considerably lower than its competitors.
Users can maintain and monitor the status of their drives with ADATA’s SSD Toolbox. It’s a nifty utility that lets users easily update their drive’s firmware as well as run diagnostic tests to check on its health status. SSD Toolbox also lets users securely wipe their drive and even has a gauge that shows the estimated lifespan of the drive. Users can also download a free copy of the Acronis True Image HD from ADATA for easy cloning and data migration.
The XPG SX8000 will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and also 1TB capacity points. And it also comes with a 5-year-long warranty, which is what you would expect for a high-end PCIe-based SSD.
Plextor M8Pe
The Plextor MP8e is offered in numerous form factors, this one comes in the M.2 2280 form factor and features a prominent heat shield.
We first saw the Plextor M8Pe at Computex 2016 earlier this year. It’s the successor to the M6e Black Edition, a curious drive that had many high-end features, but was limited by its support for the slower PCIe 2.0 x2 interface. The new M8Pe, however, is bang up to date.
For a start, it supports the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and new NVMe protocol. It is also powered by Marvell’s new high-end 88SS1093 controller and also Toshiba’s new 15nm MLC NAND. As a result, its specifications are very competitive. Plextor is claiming sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,300MB/s and 1,300MB/s respectively, while random read and write performance should be in the region of 260,000 IOPs and 250,000 IOPs respectively. These are pretty impressive numbers and so the new M8Pe should be very competitive.
Unlike some SSD manufacturers that only offer their SSDs in the M.2 form factor, Plextor is offering no less than three variants of the M8Pe. There’s the M8Pe(G), which is the one we have here, which comes in the M.2 2280 form factor and has a large anodized aluminum heatshield. Obviously, the large heatsink can make installation in notebooks tricky, so Plextor has another version of the M8Pe in the M.2 2280 form factor but without the heatsink called the M8PeGN. And for users without an M.2 slot on their motherboards, there’s a PCIe AIC version of the MP8e called the M8Pe(Y). So in total, there are three variants of the M8Pe drive. The M8Pe is available in capacities of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB.
The large heatshield helps keep operating temperature low. Plextor also sells a version without the heatshield for easy installation in notebooks.
Plextor’s attention to detail is commendable, but that has always been one of the defining traits of its SSDs. Prior to approval for retail, pre-production units of Plextor’s SSDs are rigorously tested to ensure they perform without a hitch. This include a 100% burn-in and aging test; a 48-hour long sustained read and write test; a 250 time boot cycle test; and a 4000 time idle recovery test.
Beyond these strict tests, the M8Pe also supports two Plextor technologies called TrueSpeed and TrueProtect. The former helps sustain performance levels even as the drive runs low on capacity, while the latter is a multi-layered error checking mechanism and provides 256-bit AES encryption. Unfortunately, the M8Pe isn't compatible with Plextool, Plextor's drive management utility, as of time of writing. Finally, the Plextor M8Pe comes with a 5-year-long warranty.
OCZ RD400
The OCZ RD400 is the company's latest flagship drive and its a formidable performer.
The OCZ RD400 and Samsung SSD 960 Pro were featured in standalone reviews earlier, so we will only be recapping them here. The RD400 is OCZ’s latest flagship and it supports the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and new NVMe protocol. Since OCZ has been acquired by Toshiba, it naturally uses a Toshiba-branded controller and Toshiba’s latest 15nm MLC NAND. And as we found out in our earlier review, the RD400 marks a return to form for OCZ. It’s a fast and consistent drive, and it also comes with an extremely comprehensive warranty program.
To find out more about the OCZ RD400, we encourage you to check out our earlier review here.
Samsung SSD 960 Pro
The Samsung SSD 960 Pro is the fastest drive we have ever tested, but will it be dethrone by our new contenders?
For the past couple of years, Samsung has introduced a new flagship SSD at its annual SSD Global Summit. 2016 was no different and its new flagship drive is the SSD 960 Pro. The SSD 960 Pro supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and the NVMe protocol. But more importantly, it uses Samsung’s new 5-core Polaris controller and its very own 48-layer MLC V-NAND. The results are staggering. The SSD 960 Pro posted some of the highest numbers we have ever seen from a consumer SSD. Coupled with its attractive pricing, the SSD 960 Pro will be the drive to beat in this shootout.
But if that’s not enough, Samsung recently released its own NVMe drivers for the SSD 960 Pro and says that the drivers will boost performance even further. Therefore, we will be testing the SSD 960 Pro with Samsung’s new NVMe drivers to see if there’s any improvements in performance.
To find out more about the SSD 960 Pro, we encourage you to check out our earlier review here.
Test Setup
The drives will be tested on our updated storage testbed using the Windows 10 operating system, which has the following specifications:
- Intel Core i7-4770K (3.5GHz)
- ASUS Z97-Deluxe/USB 3.1 (Intel Z97 chipset)
- 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 memory
- MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
- Windows 10 Pro
Here is the list of benchmarks used:
- AS-SSD benchmark 1.8.5636.36856
- CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2
- PCMark 8 (Storage suite)
- Atto Disk Benchmark 3.0.5
- Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
As mentioned earlier, the Samsung has just released its own NVMe drivers for the SSD 960 Pro following feedback from earlier reviews (ourselves included) that the native Windows NVMe drivers weren’t quite up to the job. The results of the SSD 960 Pro that we are presenting here will be the updated set ecorded with Samsung’s own NVMe drivers.
We are keen to see how the Plextor M8Pe and ADATA XPG SX8000 will perform. We have already established that the Samsung SSD 960 Pro and OCZ RD400 are both very quick drives, so the Plextor M8Pe and ADATA XPG SX8000 will have to be at their very best in order to stand a chance.
One thing to note is that the Samsung SSD 960 Pro and OCZ RD400 were tested with custom NVMe drivers from their respective manufacturers. On the other hand, the ADATA XPG SX8000 and Plextor M8Pe were both tested using native Windows 10 NVMe drivers, because ADATA and Plextor did not release special NVMe drivers for their drives.
The following drives were tested for this review:
- ADATA XPG SX8000 (512GB)
- Plextor M8Pe (512GB)
- OCZ RD400 (512GB)
- Samsung SSD 960 Pro (512GB)
PCMark 8
PCMark 8 is the most up-to-date system benchmarking software from benchmarking specialists Futuremark. It was designed for Windows 8 machines (now updated for Windows 10) and the storage suite test puts drives through a collection of 10 different real life workloads involving applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Word, Excel and even games like Battlefield 3 and World of Warcraft.
We begin with PCMark 8 as usual and we can see that the scores are quite tight. However, we can also clearly see that while the ADATA XPG SX8000 and Plextor M8Pe scored quite similarly, the OCZ RD400 and Samsung SSD 960 Pro were easily the better performing drives. Looking at the breakdown in speeds and individual timing scores, it is clear that the Samsung SSD 960 Pro is the fastest driving in this benchmark, followed by the OCZ RD400.
The Samsung SSD 960 Pro’s average speed of 660.92MB/s was over 15% faster than the second-place OCZ RD400, and over 55% faster than the ADATA XPG SX8000 and Plextor M8Pe.
CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 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 and 4KB (queue depth 32) data.
On CrystalDiskMark, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro’s sequential read and write speeds are out of this world. Its sequential read speed of 2,555MB/s was 60% or nearly a full 1GB/s faster than the second-place Plextor M8Pe; and it was nearly twice as fast as the OCZ RD400 and ADATA XPG SX8000. Its sequential write speed was just as impressive as it was over 44% faster than the second-place OCZ RD400.
The Samsung SSD 960 Pro’s showing on the 4K read and write workload was just as impressive as it was clearly in a different league when compared to its competitors. Here, its read and write speeds were over 20% faster than the nearest competitor, which is a big deal. The OCZ RD400 was no slouch as it was comfortably faster than both the ADATA XPG SX8000 and Plextor M8Pe.
On the more intensive 4K, 32 queue depth workload, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro finally showed some signs of weakness. While its recorded speeds were pretty decent, it was outclassed thoroughly by the OCZ RD400. The Plextor M8Pe put up a good fight here too, and its read speeds were quite strong.
AS SSD 1.8.5636.36856 Results
AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. This benchmark is useful because some controllers, like the once popular but now defunct SandForce SF-2281, compress data first before moving them around. However, with non-compressible and random data, controllers cannot compress the data first, which forces them to deal with data as they are. Therefore, this is a useful benchmark to prevent drivers using controllers like the SF-2281 controller or similar from gaining an upper hand.
On AS SSD’s Copy Benchmark, we can see that the Samsung SSD 960 Pro was the runaway performer as it recorded the highest transfer speeds on all three workloads. Trailing behind was the OCZ RD400 and then the Plextor M8Pe. But it has to be said that both the OCZ and Plextor drives performed quite similarly. The ADATA XPG SX8000, on the other hand, was disappointing as its recorded transfer speeds were the lowest by a significant margin.
Moving on to sequential read and write performance, there’s no surprises as the Samsung SSD 960 Pro led the way once more with its blistering read and write speeds. The Plextor M8Pe came in second with its very competitive read and write speeds. The ADATA XPG SX8000 also faired quite well here with its very decent read and write speeds. Finally, the OCZ RD400 was erratic as its read speeds were good, but its write speeds were quite underwhelming, as it was the only drive to record under 1GB/s.
On the 4K workload, all four drives were quite comparable and competitive. The OCZ RD400 stood out for its high write speeds, but the Samsung SSD 960 Pro had the upper hand when it came to read speeds.
On the more intensive 4K, 64 thread workload, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro was the clear leader, recording speeds of over 1.2GB/s for both reads and writes. The Plextor M8Pe was a strong performer here, recording over 1GB/s read speeds and 631MB/s write speeds. The OCZ RD400 was a distant third, and the ADATA XPG SX8000 was quite disappointing once more as it was markedly slower than the fastest performing drives.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 3.0.2 Results
ATTO is one of the oldest benchmarks around, but it’s still a useful tool to gauge a drive’s adeptness at managing compressible data. It’s also useful for seeing how a drive performs across a variety of different transfer block size.
Unsurprisingly, given the sequential nature of the data that ATTO throws at the drive, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro was a strong performer. On the 8MB and 32K data workloads, the SSD 960 Pro was the undisputed leader. Its read speed on the 32K work load, was particularly impressive at nearly 3GB/s. That’s over 200% faster than the second-place OCZ RD400.
However, on the smallest 4K data block workload, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro was brought down to earth and was unable to muster any kind of advantage over its competitors. In fact, the OCZ RD400 managed to put a real good fight and was more than a match for the Samsung SSD 960 Pro on this workload. Elsewhere, the Plextor M8Pe had pretty good write speeds, but its read speeds were surprisingly low. And again, the ADATA XPG SX8000 wasn't really competitive at all.
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.
Looking at the graphs, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro was clearly the best performer overall, though it must be said that the OCZ RD400 came close to matching it on the Streaming Reads and Writes workloads. The Plextor M8Pe’s performance on the Streaming Reads and Writes was disappointing, but it was a match for the OCZ RD400 on the more intensive File and Web Server workloads. Finally, we can see that the ADATA XPG SX8000 was the poorest performing drive.
Iometer Results (Part 2)
Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Here, we can see that the Samsung SSD 960 Pro consistently recorded the lowest average response times. And while the Plextor M8Pe’s average response times were on the high side on the Streaming Reads and Writes workloads, they were quite comparable to the Samsung SSD 960 Pro and OCZ RD400 on the File and Web Server workloads. The ADATA XPG SX8000 recorded the highest average response times across all workloads.
And the Winner is...
As we have established in our numerous earlier reviews of PCIe-based SSDs, this class of SSDs can provide performance that far outstrips SATA-based SSDs. This is not surprising when you remember that the maximum bandwidth of the SATA 6Gbps interface is just around 550MB/s, whereas the theoretical maximum bandwidth of the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface is a 4GB/s or 4,000MB/s. Even if you take inefficiencies into account, it’s still many times faster than the SATA interface.
However, the high speeds of PCIe-based SSDs come at a price. They are as expensive as they are fast, and command a significant premium over their slower SATA-based counterparts. Fortunately, however, prices of these super-fast SSDs have been coming down quite dramatically, which is good news for consumers.
The ADATA XPG SX8000's performance was disappointing, but it is the most affordable drive by a considerable margin.
Let’s begin our conclusion analysis with the ADATA XPG SX8000. The XPG SX8000 entered the shootout as a bit of a wildcard. Silicon Motion is a relatively new player in the consumer SSD scene, and the XPG SX8000’s decision to go with more advanced 3D NAND is interesting and we had hoped that it would have provided it with a performance advantage.
However, that did not materialize. Instead, the XPG SX8000 found itself comprehensively outpaced by its rivals in the majority of the benchmarks, and wasn’t very competitive at all. Luckily, the XPG SX8000 does offer quite good features. Hardware encryption isn’t supported as of now, but will be added in future via a firmware update, so that’s something to look for to. It also comes with a drive management utility, which, albeit basic, is nonetheless useful. Plus it comes with a free cloning utility too, which is thoughtful and helpful.
But its trump card is its price. At S$349, it is the most affordable drive, and by a fairly large margin too. Even if its performance isn’t compelling, its lower price could be enough to make some users think twice.
The Plextor M8Pe offers competitive performance at an attractive price.
The Plextor M8Pe enters this shootout with a lot of hope and expectation. Plextor’s last flagship - the M6e Black Edition - was a disappointment in our last shootout, and the company is keen to avoid another drubbing. Fortunately, the new M8Pe did not disappoint. Overall, its performance was more than decent. Even though the M8Pe wasn’t a match for the blazing fast Samsung SSD 960 Pro, it was a strong challenger against the OCZ RD400 and also miles faster than the ADATA XPG SX8000. It’s also backed by Plextor’s reputation for reliability, and it has some useful features like a heatshield and hardware AES encryption.
But that’s not all, the cherry on top of the cake has got to be its reasonable price. At S$377, it is slightly pricier than the ADATA XPG SX8000, but a whole lot more affordable than the OCZ RD400 and Samsung SSD 960. In light of its respectable performance and rich set of features, the MP8e is a good choice for consumers and a strong winner of our Best Value Award.
The OCZ RD400 is fast, but it is priced much too high.
As we mentioned in our earlier review of the OCZ RD400, the drive marks a return to form for OCZ. The RD400 is fast, has a high endurance rating, and comes with an excellent 5-year warranty program.
If you don’t already know about OCZ’s warranty program, it’s called the Advanced Warranty Program and it aims to reduce the hassle of drive replacements by sending affected customers a replacement drive first. Users can then send their faulty drive back using the mailer that came with the replacement drive. It's OCZ way of saying sorry to owners who trusted in their products and have to go through the hassle of replacing their drives. It also shows just how confident OCZ is of their drives.
Unfortunately, the RD400 is priced much too high in our books. Back in August, prior to the launch of the other three SSDs here, its asking price of S$509 would have seemed reasonable, attractive even. But now, with the ADATA and Plextor costing well under S$400, the RD400 is way too pricey. When quizzed, OCZ said that there are no plans for a price revision, but we think that a price cut somewhere down the line is inevitable if they want to remain competitive.
The Samsung SSD 960 Pro's terrific performance and reasonable price make it the winner in this shootout.
Now, why do we say that a price cut is inevitable? That’s because of the last drive in our shootout, the Samsung SSD 960 Pro. As it is, Samsung is the 800-pound gorilla in the consumer SSD market. For the past couple of years, its drives have provided a very good combination of performance and price that makes it easy for us to recommend them. And the new SSD 960 Pro is no different.
Insofar as performance is concerned, the SSD 960 Pro is nearly unbeatable. Samsung's own NVMe drivers helped in making performance more consistent across the board, and so the SSD 960 Pro came out tops in almost all of our benchmarks. Furthmore, its margin of victory can be quite incredible. In fact, it is easily the fastest drive we have ever tested.
But performance aside, the SSD 960 Pro also offers very good endurance ratings, supports hardware encryption, and comes with a free data migration utility. The newest version of Samsung Magician (Samsung's own drive management utility) isn't quite ready yet at this time, but the company has said that it plans to make it available in the next few weeks.
At S$459, there’s no denying that the SSD 960 Pro is substantially pricier than the competition. But then its performance is unprecedented, so we feel that this price premium is more than justified and handily takes the Winning crown. Besides, if you are looking for something more affordable, Samsung also offers a little something called the SSD 960 Evo, which we will be testing shortly, so stay tuned.
ADATA XPG SX8000 | Plextor M8Pe | OCZ RD400 | Samsung SSD 960 Pro | |
Price | S$349 | S$377 | S$509 | S$459 |
Price per GB | ~S$0.68 | ~S$0.74 | ~S$0.99 | ~$0.90 |
Model | ADATA XPG SX8000 | Plextor M8Pe | OCZ RD400 | Samsung SSD 960 Pro |
Performance | 7.0 | 8.0 | 8.5 | 9.0 |
Features | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.5 |
Value | 8.0 | 9.0 | 7.5
(adjusted down from 9.0) | 8.5
(adjusted down from 9.5) |
Overall | 7.5 | 8.5 | 8.0
(adjusted down from 8.5) | 9.0 |
Final Words
In summary, there can be little doubt that the Samsung SSD 960 Pro is the ultimate high-end drive. It’s incredible performance and rather reasonable price makes it an obvious choice for users who want the very best.
The Plextor M8Pe had high expectations and it delivered, mostly. Thanks to its attractive pricing, it is the most bang for buck SSD in this shootout.
OCZ RD400 is clearly the drive that could have dethroned Samsung's offering, but alas, its price isn't quite proportionate for what it offers. One could argue it has the best after-sales support service program and while we don't refute that, it is nevertheless a notable price difference to swallow. New contenders and new price points have emerged and that unfortunately makes the OCZ drive hard to recommend in this new state of comparison.
For penny pinchers, the ADATA XPG SX8000 is the obvious choice. It is the most affordable drive by far, and even though its performance isn’t quite in the same league as its rivals, it isn’t entirely shabby and users will definitely be able to appreciate the boost in performance against slower SATA-based SSDs.