A New Marvell Controller
For most users, you might be more familiar with the brand Plextor as an optical drive manufacturer. However, recognizing that the days of the optical drive are numbered, Plextor diversified their product offerings to include SSDs, releasing their first SSD product in 2010.
Today, Plextor is recognized as one of the top SSD makers, at least in foreign circles. Specifically, Plextor is admired for its reliability and performance, and its insistence on using Marvell-based controllers as opposed to the more popular SandForce ones.
The new M5 Pro follows in this tradition and is powered by the latest Marvell 88SS9187 controller. This is Marvell’s third-generation controller is the successor to the older 88SS9174 which was used in SSDs such as the Intel SSD 510 Series and Crucial M4. Incidentally, the M5 Pro is the first drive in our lab to officially use the new Marvell controller. We say officially because we indicated that the recently reviewed OCZ Vertex 4 could very well be using this very controller too, however OCZ has neither confirmed or denied this speculation.
The M5 Pro is the successor the M3 Pro and is Plextor’s current top-of-the-line SSD model. Targeted at enthusiasts who demand the very best, the M5 Pro also uses Toshiba’s new 19nm Toggle-Mode MLC NAND memory chips and the latest SATA 6Gbps interface. Plextor will offer the M5 Pro in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities.
Here’s a look at the Plextor M5 Pro drive:-
The new Plextor M5 Pro is a simple-looking SSD with a brushed aluminum cover. Like most SSDs, it comes in a 7mm form factor so it'll fit into notebooks with ease.
SATA 6Gbps interface for the quickest possible transfers.
In terms of accessories, the Plextor M5 Pro comes with only an installation bracket. No SATA data or power cables.
Test Setup
The drives tested on our storage testbed, has the following system specifications:
- Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
- MSI Z68A-GD80 (Intel Z68 chipset)
- 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 memory
- MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
- Windows 7
The list of SSDs tested are as follows:
- Plextor M5 Pro (256GB) (Firmware 1.01)
- Plextor M2S (256GB) (Firmware 1.09)
- OCZ Vertex 4 (256GB) (Firmware 1.5 Beta)
- Transcend SATA III SSD720 (256GB) (Firmware: 5.0.2)
- Kingmax SATA III SSD SMP35 Client (240GB) (Firmware: L0306)
- Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
- Crucial M4 SSD (240GB)
- Kingston HyperX SSD (240GB)
The new Plextor M5 Pro will be pitted against the current bumper crop of ultra-quick SandForce drives and this includes the new Intel SSD 520 Series and the Transcend SATA III SSD720. Also, it will be interesting to see how the M5 Pro matches up against the OCZ Vertex 4, which we have speculated to be using the same Marvell 88SS9187 controller. We’ve also included a year-old Plextor M2S SSD. Although targeted at more mainstream users, this drive uses the older Marvel 88S9174 controller (like the Crucial M4), and would be a good reference against the M5 Pro.
Also, a note to add is that updating firmware on the Plextor drives is a troublesome process because it requires you to write the firmware to a writeable CD or DVD and then booting from it. Seeing that Transcend, OCZ and Kingmax all have much simpler updating procedures which require users to only download an update utility, we can’t see why Plextor couldn’t do the same.
The list of benchmarks used are as follows:
- AS-SSD benchmark 1.6.4
- HD Tune Pro 4.6
- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
- PCMark 7
- PCMark Vantage
- Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
AS SSD Results
AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the 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 don't gain an upper hand.
The Plextor M5 Pro got off to a promising start as its sequential read and write speeds were amongst the best. Its sequential write speeds, in particular, were faster than SandForce drives and was bested only by the OCZ Vertex 4. Its performance on the 4k 64 threads run was also encouraging, again significantly faster than any SandForce drive, but again, it was slightly slower than the OCZ Vertex 4.
Its performance on the copy benchmark was also strong, recording the fastest speeds in the ISO workload and was competitive in both the Program and Game workloads.
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.
The Plextor M5 Pro got off to a good start and posted very high sequential read and write speeds. Its sequential write performance was 13% faster than the even the fastest SandForce drive. Performance on the 4k workload was a little shaky as it posted fast read speeds but below par write speeds. On the 4k, 32 queue depth work load, which is a more accurate representation of everyday usage, it redeemed itself by recording speeds that surpassed every SandForce drive.
HD Tune Pro 4.6 Results
On HD Tune Pro, the Plextor M5 Pro’s performance was a mixed bag. On the sequential read and write performance, it was competitive as far as Marvell-powered drives are concerned. It was the quickest Marvell drive by some margin in read performance and only lost out slightly to the OCZ Vertex 4 when it came to write performance. Random read and write performance, however, was pretty dismal. While it was common for Marvell drives to perform poorly in HD Tune’s random read performance, this was the first time we noted that any drive for performing badly in the random write section as well. Our guess is that either the M5 Pro’s firmware needs tweaking or it’s just a case of the drive not agreeing with this particular test.
Futuremark PCMark 7 Results
Like most of the Marvell drives (OCZ and Crucial), the Plextor M5 Pro was disappointing on PCMark 7, scoring only 2688 3DMarks, around half of what the top SandForce drives are capable of. Looking at the breakdown of the results, we can see that the M5 Pro trails the SandForce drives in nearly every test except for Starting Applications, where it was the fastest.
That said, we noticed that the older Plextor M2S was actually decent in this particular benchmark despite being Marvell-driven too. We can only speculate that perhaps the older drive has a more mature and refined firmware that the new M5 Pro doesn’t.
Futuremark PCMark Vantage Results
Marvell drives always had issues with Futuremark benchmarks and it was the same with PCMark Vantage. The Plextor M5 Pro did not record an overall score as it did not complete all the tests. Like OCZ Vertex 4 and Crucial M4, all three drives fell short at Test 7 - Windows Media Player, Adding Music. Even so, if we look at the breakdown, its performance was poor or below par on most of the workloads. It was only competitive on Test 3 - Adding Pictures. Again, we noticed that the older Plextor M2S could run decently on PCMark Vantage, leading us to believe that it benefitted from a more mature firmware. Maybe in time Plextor would rectify this for the new M5 Pro drive.
Iometer Results (Part 1)
The Plextor M5 Pro was generally one of the better performing drives when it came to 64k streaming reads and writes. Write performance was very good as it posted higher IOPs than all the SandForce drives, losing out only very slightly to the OCZ Vertex 4.
Where it really shine, however, was on the File and Web Server workloads. On the File Server workload, the M5 Pro recorded IOPs that was significantly higher than all the other drives. It was also the clear leader on the Web Server workload as well. This results seem to tally with some of the more demanding tests shown earlier where the Plextor drive is able to really shine and it was the same here as well; only more pronounced.
Iometer Results (Part 2)
Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Considering its high IOPs recordings earlier, it wasn’t surprising to see that the Plextor M5 Pro is one of the more responsive drives, posting some of the lowest average response times. Looking at its very low average response times in the File and Web Server workloads, we can understand why it achieved such high IOPs reading earlier.
Not so Marvell-ous
Like the OCZ Vertex 4, the Plextor M5 Pro is an interesting addition to the current crop of high-performance consumer-grade SSDs. While most manufacturers are using the very popular SandForce SF-2281 controller, the Plextor M5 Pro breaks the mold by utilizing the latest Marvell 88SS9187 controller.
In terms of performance, the Plextor M5 Pro performs very similarly to the OCZ Vertex 4. What this means is that generally, its read performance was found to be below that of what the SandForce drives are capable of. Also, performance on the two Futuremark benchmarks - PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7 - and HD Tune were erratic. Although we’ve noticed this with just about every Marvell drive we’ve tested, we found that the older Marvell-powered Plextor M2S was able to complete these benchmarks without a hitch. Hence, we we speculate that this is an issue that is related more to the firmware than the controller.
Very pricey and perhaps still a little raw, the Plextor M5 Pro shines in some areas but needs further refinement if it is to realize its potential; it could easily have been the fastest SSD in our lab to-date if not for its erratic performance.
That said, on benchmarks where the M5 Pro ran smoothly such as AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark and Iometer, the drive proved to be a capable performer. On AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark, the M5 Pro was one of the top performing drives, posting very credible read speeds and write speeds that surpassed all the SandForce drives. On Iometer, it recorded very high IOPs too, especially on the File and Web Server workloads. On a whole, we also noticed that it had very good write performance and would probably suit strenuous usage needs very well, especially if your typical usage requires more writing than reading to the drive,.
As we’ve highlighted numerous times before, early SandForce drives were plagued by reliability issues and although much of it has been rectified with firmware updates from their respective manufacturers, there are still reports of drives that are suffering from random occurrences of BSODs. Hence, for those who are cautious and skeptical of SandForce drives, the Marvell-powered Plextor M5 Pro is a viable alternative.
Retailing for US$264, the Plextor M5 Pro is a pricey drive. Especially so when you consider that the equivalently fast OCZ Vertex 4 is much more affordable at US$199 and the better performing SandForce drives such as the Intel SDD 520 Series and Transcend SSD 720 are going for US$237 and US$214 respectively.
So is it worth the extra? Well, if performance on Iometer, AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark is anything to by, than maybe yes. Why maybe? Because the Plextor M5 Pro an drive of extremes. It certainly shows potential, but to realize it would require Plextor to rework the firmware to fully optimize the drive. However, if Plextor is able to do so, then the M5 Pro could possibly be the fastest SSD yet.
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