The Plextor M8Pe (512GB) SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on December 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here.
On the Heavy test, the Plextor M8Pe can't compete with Samsung's MLC-based PCIe SSDs, but its average data rate is almost as high as the 1TB Samsung 960 EVO, and the 512GB OCZ RD400. The M8Pe is about 66% faster overall than the best SATA SSDs; a smaller margin than for The Destroyer but still substantial.
The average service time if the M8Pe is surprisingly slightly better when the test is run on a full drive than an empty drive. Either way, it doesn't deliver latencies as low as Samsung's PCIe SSDs, but it is close to the rest of the MLC-based PCIe SSDs.
The M8Pe has about twice as many high-latency outliers as the fastest PCIe SSDs, and the SATA-based Samsung 850 Pro is only a little worse off than the M8Pe.
The power consumption of the M8Pe is again worse than any PCIe M.2 drive other than the much slower Intel SSD 600p.
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The_Assimilator - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Conclusion page: the paragraph "The performance differences between the Plextor M8Pe and the Toshiba OCZ RD400..." is repeated. BRO DO YOU EVEN EDITOR?Billy Tallis - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
I think the problem may have been too much editor. My browser was getting really laggy and unresponsive while I was finishing up the article and rearranging things.Threnx - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
Whoa there are still readers here? hah, I was cleaning out my bookmarks and saw anandtech. You realize all the talent left ages ago right? This site is dead. They're just riding on the name now...cbrownx88 - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
@Threnx - where do you go now since Anandtech is a shell of its former glory?TemjinGold - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
So... it basically loses across the board to the EVO but they want to charge more for it?Billy Tallis - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Keep in mind that the 960 EVO results here are for the 1TB model, and that kind of capacity advantage usually brings some performance advantage, too. But yeah, once the 960 EVO is actually shipping in volume, a lot of prices will probably have to come down. Unless the 960 EVO price goes up.close - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Prices for Samsung SSDs are rising due to the NAND shortage. If Plextor manages to resist this trend they might do well. After all most current workloads don't need anywhere near that kind of level of performance so a slight performance disadvantage is tolerable as long as it's reflected in the price.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
I wasn't aware of a NAND shortage. Do you happen to know the cause?Samus - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
It's simply a supply and demand issue. Other causes are manufacturing process adjustments and lower yield issues often associated with transitioning to new processes.However, the shortage isn't as dire as 'close' makes it seem. Drive prices aren't necessarily increasing because of the shortage, but they aren't falling as they should be with the density improvements associated with TLC and widespread adoption of 3D VNAND. Samsung drives are increasing in price because vendors have noticed sharper demand for them than other drive, and I'm sure you can guess why based on this article alone...I'm not a Samsung fan, but they are currently the most balanced SSD products on the consumer market.
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
Ah that makes sense. Thanks!