G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 12, 2014 9:02 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2011
Back in 2011 (which seems like so long ago now!), we introduced our AnandTech Storage Bench, a suite of benchmarks that took traces of real OS/application usage and played them back in a repeatable manner. The MOASB, officially called AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 – Heavy Workload, mainly focuses on peak IO performance and basic garbage collection routines. There is a lot of downloading and application installing that happens during the course of this test. Our thinking was that it's during application installs, file copies, downloading and multitasking with all of this that you can really notice performance differences between drives. The full description of the Heavy test can be found here, while the Light workload details are here.
The Phoenix Blade continues to be strong in our 2011 Storage Benches, although the XP941 retrieves its crown as the fastest client drive. I'm guessing the XP941 is more optimized for typical client workloads, which the 2011 suites present, whereas the 2013 workload is much, much heavier and only applies to users with very heavy IO workload.
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Supercell99 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Did we ever found out about the endurance of the XP941? Is it artificially limited? The endurance of the GSKILL blade may actually make it worth an extra $200 if it can really hold up to that can of write endurance. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8006/samsung-ssd-xp9...Dug - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Ahh ok. Thank you for the response. My fault for not understanding the weight attributed to a certain benchmark.olderkid - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Any idea if we're going to see the Samsung SM951 anytime soon? It's all I've been waiting on for a new x99 build.Laststop311 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link
Bro i KNOW! I have been on the lookout for sm951 for a long time. When I saw this drive was going to be native pci-e 3.0 x4 m2 ssd + nvme + available in 1TB capacity I was like OMG this is my new drive I dont care what the price is it's 100% goin into my next build. That was like almost 6 months ago or something and still no word. I'm rly sad I hope it is still going to come out.I am not building till Skylake-E so i still have plenty of time. Even tho I am on gulftown i7-980x which is over 4 years old goin on 5 years it still isn't slow enough to be a bottleneck especially on 4.2Ghz OC. Not even upgrading for the cpu just for features I want like DDR4, PCI-E 4.0, ultra m2 slot, sata express, usb 3.0 that isnt from a third party controller (yes I don't have native usb 3.0 still). I still might buy somethign else other than a pc upgrade. This year I bought a 55" oled LG's 2nd gen 55" oled instead of a pc upgrade ( best decision ever it is eye searingly beautiful).
Laststop311 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link
3000 for 55" oled = WINpersonne - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
I'm disappointed no RAID0 SSD setups were included. That's a cost effective option many people will explore which often has comparable performance. Three 850 Pros for 768GB is still less than this device.HoldDaMayo - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Well said, I was thinking the exact same thing.Kristian Vättö - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
I don't have any sets of two drives, so I couldn't include any RAID 0 results here. I may provide an update later if I get my hands on some, though.personne - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
I've often wondered why these kinds of review sites don't keep databases of results. I realize that the benchmark suites change and you're not a huge operation, but even having recent results to compare openly (using your own front end or even releasing open data) would really up this game and enable your users to participate better. I don't want to sound harsh, but it's 2014, reviewing sites have been around for yearly twenty years and they have changed little in format. Anandtech is easily one of the best, but many sites come down to a few pictures of results and some fairly arbitrary comments (Storage Review is one exception; since the start they've had a database where results can be arbitrarily compared). I hope sooner or later Wikipedia and other collective open benchmarking sites will start elevating comparison and I'd hope to see sites like Anandtech leading the way.Thanks for listening. (=
Kristian Vättö - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Well, we've had the Bench section with all of our benchmark data for as long as I can remember.http://www.anandtech.com/bench