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Today we take a look at the recently released Plextor M6V SSD, specifically the 256GB model. These drives incorporate Toshiba NAND flash memory and are released to target a wide enthusiast audience due to the competitive pricing. Right now this 256GB model is available for around £70 from Scan in the UK.
The Plextor M6V is offered in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB capacities, with onboard DRAM cache sizes of 128MB, 256MB and 512MB respectively.
Plextor M6V performance overview:
PX-128M6V – 128GB :535 MB/sec Read – 170 MB/sec Write.
PX-256M6V – 256GB: 535 MB/sec Read – 335 MB/sec Write.
PX-512M6V – 512GB: 535 MB/sec Read – 455 MB/sec Write.
The 128GB, 256GB and 512GB drives all deliver the same 535MB/s read speeds, however due to the architecture and memory channels adopted for each drive the smaller capacities suffer from rather significantly reduced write speeds. The 512GB model delivers a full 455MB/s. while the 256GB and 128GB models produce 335MB/s and 170MB/s respectively.
The Plextor M6V box artwork is very subdued but we do like the blue and two tone grey colour scheme … it is certainly different.
The rear of the box highlights some specifications, including Random 4K IOPS performance. We can see that the 256GB and 512GB drives both deliver 83K 4k random read, and 80k 4k random write, while the 128GB drive performance suffers, delivering 81K 4k random read and 42k 4k random write.
Not much in the way of extras, just some literature on the warranty terms. We have covered Plexturbo software before, which you can read HERE.
The chassis follows the same colour scheme as the box – light multi tone greys and blue along the top of the sticker.
The drive incorporates A15nm Toggle NAND from Toshiba. There are 8 NAND flash memory chips on one side of the PCB. The other side is left empty – although the 512GB version of this drive would likely be fully populated on both sides. The controller chip is the Silicon Motion SMI-2246. There is a DDR3 Hynix memory cache chip installed on the PCB – in this case 256MB.For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
Kitguru Test Rig 3
Other Drives
Micron M600 256GB
Apotop S3C 256GB
Angelbird 512GB wrk
Hynix SH920/910A
OCZ ARC 100 240GB
OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Intel 520 Series 240GB
Intel 730 240GB
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
OCZ Vector 150 256GB
OCZ Vector 240GB
OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (1.4 fw)
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SDD
SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB
OCZ Agility 4 256GB
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
Samsung 830 Series 512GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS
ADATA S510 120GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
OCZ Octane 512GB (fw 1.13)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 3.0.3.
AS SSD.
IOMeter.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3.
Overall performance is good, although sequential write performance is almost 200 MB/s slower than the leading Solid State Drives on the market today.
The Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller handles compressible and incompressible data equally well, which will help in certain environments – such as when dealing with large video files and images.
Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Sequential read performance is excellent, hitting 561MB/s. Write performance holds at 355 MB/s, well short of the market leaders.
Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
AS SSD deals exclusively with incompressible data, and we can see the Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller performs very well in this situation.
Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months.
IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.
We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary between the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.
IOPS performance is strong in both 4k random read and 4k random write tests – scoring in and around the 80,000 mark.
The Plextor M6V 256GB SSD is facing a tough task – getting visibility and traction in a market literally flooded with high quality drives from a variety of manufacturers. The M6V is the new budget, ‘mass market' drive for the company and as such it has to compete against the market leaders such as the ever popular EVO series from Samsung.
Aesthetically the M6V rates highly, we appreciate the subtle, understated design. No one is likely to base a buying decision on the appearance of a Solid State Drive however and we do have to raise some points against the M6V, especially in regards to sequential write performance.
Plextor have released the M6V series in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. While all of the drives deliver read performance around 535MB/s, the write performance drops from the 512GB rated 455 MB/s to 335 MB/s from the 256GB drive and then to a paltry 170 MB/s from the 128GB drive. In today's Solid State Drive market a write speed of 170 MB/s seems positively archaic so the smallest M6V would seem difficult to recommend at all.
The 256GB drive we reviewed today feels fast enough in a real world environment but if you simply must have the fastest write speeds, we do feel that 335 MB/s is lagging behind the M6V's leading competitors. The Samsung 250GB EVO for instance is not only faster, but it is slightly less expensive – available at only £69.35 inc vat from Amazon.
You can buy the Plextor M6V 256GB from Scan for £71.10 inc vat. However be aware that the Scan store page for the 256GB drive has listed the higher write speeds (455MB/s) only achievable via the larger, more expensive 512GB drive.
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Pros:
- IOPS performance.
- Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller deals with incompressible and compressible data in equal measure.
- we like the appearance.
- reasonable pricing.
Cons:
- 256GB and 128GB models have much slower write speeds (335 MB/s and 170 MB/s respectively).
- facing incredibly stiff competition from the likes of Samsung.
Kitguru says: The Plextor M6V is a solid all round solid state drive, but unless you buy the biggest 512GB model the write performance will take a significant hit.
