Model: Plextor PX-256M3P 256GB Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Plextor
Provided By: Plextor LLC
As one of the biggest names in the storage industry, Plextor doesn't need much of an introduction. For more than a decade, they've produced some of the best optical drives the industry has seen. Known the world over for their quality, performance, and features, these drives have become favorites among consumers and professionals alike. Today, Plextor continues to lead the way by bringing cutting edge storage technologies to market. Along with a vast assortment of high-performance DVD and Blu-ray drives, the company offers a growing number of NAS devices, external hard drives and solid state drives.
While Plextor got off to a slow start, the company has become a real contender in the consumer solid-state drive (SSD) market. Earlier this year, the company launched its M3 Series (M3S) SSD. Powered by Plextor's exclusive True Speed technology, the M3 Series leveraged high quality components like Marvell's server-grade 88SS9174 controller chip and Toshiba's 24nm Toggle NAND flash. It also featured an advanced firmware with Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling, and Bad Block Management to maintain original performance levels, even after intensive use and long periods of operation.
Plextor has now released its M3 Pro Series SSD. While based on the same Marvell 88SS9174 controller chip as the M3 Series, this new drive offers a number of improvements. To bring the performance up to "Pro" levels, Plextor has optimized the firmware to deliver up to 540MB/s read and 450MB/s write speeds as well as a maximum of 69,000 4KB random write IOPS. The company also reduced the height of the drive to 7mm, making it compatible with ultra-slim notebooks.
For this review, Plextor sent us the PX-256M3P. This 256GB SSD comes equipped with 512MB of on-board cache and is capable of delivering up to 540MB/s sequential read and 420MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 75,000 random read and 68,000 random write IOPS.
| Plextor PX-256M3P 256GB Solid State Drive | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
General Specifications
Performance
Reliability
Power Consumption
Environmental
Dimensions and Weight
Other Features
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Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the PX-256M3P has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Plextor's new 256GB SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the PX-256M3P have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from Plextor? Keep reading as we find out.
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The PX-256M3S comes in a shiny, blue and black box. Along with a picture of the drive, the front advertises many of its key features including its 256GB capacity, SATA 6Gbps interface, True Speed technology and 5 year warranty. The back of the box provides a bit more information regarding its features, specifications and box contents. Inside, you'll find the SSD, a 3.5" adapter bracket, mounting screws, quick installation guide, warranty card and a CD containing NTI's SSD Utility Suite.
Physical Features:
Like Plextor's previous SSDs, the M3 Pro is very well constructed. The drive's outer casing is made entirely out of metal. Along with it being strong and durable, it is very lightweight. On top of that, its brushed aluminum finish looks great.
Plextor has reduced the M3 Pro's height from the standard 9.5mm down to 7mm. While that doesn't sound like much, this ultra-slim form factor lets you install the drive in ultrabooks as well as standard laptops and desktop PCs.
With the top off, you can see that Plextor has placed thermal pads on the controller, NAND flash and DDR3 cache chips. These pads transfer heat away from the components to the outer casing, which then acts like a large heat spreader.
As I mentioned earlier, the M3 Pro uses Marvell's 88SS9174-BKK2 controller chip. The 88SS9174-BKK2 can be found in a number of other high-performance SSDs including the Corsair Performance Pro, Buffalo SSD-NS/PM3P and Intel SSD 510 as well as Plextor's own M2S, M2P and M3S series.
For the PX-256M3S, Plextor has opted to use Toshiba's 24nm TH58TEG8D2HBA8C Toggle Mode NAND flash chips. Looking at the picture above, you can see that there are eight of these chips on the top of the PCB. The drive also has two 256MB Nanya NT5CB128M16B-CG DDR3 memory chips that are used for caching and garbage collection.
The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the PX-256M3P, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 4.61 and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the SanDisk Extreme, Samsung 830 SSD, Plextor PX-256M3S, Patriot Pyro SE, Plextor PX-256M2P, Kingston HyperX, OCZ Vertex 3 and OCZ Agility 3.
Like the PX-256M2P and PX-256M3S, the PX-256M3P is based on Marvel's 88SS9174 controller chip. While not as popular as some of the newer SandForce controllers, the 88SS9174 does have one major advantage in that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Plextor PX-256M3P |
 SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB |
According to Plextor, the PX-256M3P is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 420 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
 Plextor PX-256M3P - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The PX-256M3P performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 491.4 MB/s and write at 396.9 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the PX-256M3P's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the PX-256M3P had average read and write speeds of 352.4 MB/s and 247.9 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 321.1 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the PX-256M3P's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Plextor PX-256M3P |
 SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB |
When tested with ATTO, the PX-256M3P's read speeds topped out at about 535 MB/s and its write speeds at 425 MB/s.
AS SSD:
AS SSD is a relatively new benchmark designed specifically for solid state drives. The application contains five synthetic tests used to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of a drive.
 Plextor PX-256M3P |
 SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB |
AS SSD also includes a copy benchmark. This test copies an ISO (two large files), program (many small files) and game (small and large files), returning the speed and duration of each.
 Plextor PX-256M3P |
 SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB |
HD Tune Pro 4.61:
Next, I ran a series of tests using HD Tune Pro. This hard disk utility measures a drive's performance by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its access time, burst rate and CPU usage. For this review, I'm also going to use it to benchmark the PX-256M3P's random read and write speeds, random access times and the number of operations per second.
 Plextor PX-256M3P - HD Tune Read Benchmark |
 SanDisk Extreme 240GB - HD Tune Read Benchmark |
 Plextor PX-256M3P - HD Tune Write Benchmark |
 SanDisk Extreme 240GB - HD Tune Write Benchmark |
The PX-256M3P performed fairly well when benchmarked with HD Tune. The drive had average read and write speeds of 432.4 MB/s and 369.3 MB/s, respectively, and a burst rate of 331.2 MB/s when reading.
 Plextor PX-256M3P - HD Tune Random Access Read |
 SanDisk Extreme 240GB - HD Tune Random Access Read |
 Plextor PX-256M3P - HD Tune Random Access Write |
 SanDisk Extreme 240GB - HD Tune Random Access Write |
The PX-256M3P didn't perform as well as the Extreme when doing random reads and writes. Nevertheless, when writing 4KB blocks, the drive reached 15,087 IOPS and had an average speed of 58.936 MB/s.
Iometer:
Lastly, I ran a series of tests using Iometer. This tool can be configured to benchmark a number of things. In this case, I used it to measure the PX-256M3P's read and write speeds and the number of operations per second. The tests were run using random bytes and a queue depth of 3.
The PX-256M3P's performance was very similar to what we saw in our other tests. The drive was able to read at 509,86 MB/s and write at 422.89 MB/s. This wasn't enough to top the SandForce-based drives when reading and writing highly compressible, repeating data. However, the PX-256M3P had a clear advantage when writing incompressible, random data.
The PX-256M3P performed surprisingly well when doing random reads and writes. In our tests, the drive was able to write at 217.74 MB/s and read at a blazing 146.55 MB/s. This wasn't enough to top the SandForce-based drives when doing random writes with highly compressible, repeating data. However, the PX-256M3P was more than 40 MB/s faster than the SanDisk Extreme and Patriot Pyro SE when writing random data.
According to Plextor, the PX-256M3P is capable of 75,000 IOPS when reading and 68,000 IOPS when writing 4K blocks. In our tests, the drive reached 37,516 random read IOPS and 55,743 random write IOPS. The only way I was able to match Plextor's numbers was to increase the queue depth. With the queue depth set to 32, the PX-235M3P reached 73,709 random read IOPS and 64,329 random write IOPS.
TRIM and True Speed:
While SSD's offer many benefits, there are some downsides to using flash memory. One of the biggest issues people run into is performance degradation. Over time, an SSD will run out of fresh blocks and will have to write over data the file system has marked as deleted. This procedure is very complicated and can slow an SSD's write speeds considerably.
To fix this problem, most manufacturers have added TRIM support to their SSDs. The TRIM command allows an operating system, such as Windows 7, to tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. Using this information, the drive pro-actively erases these blocks and adds them to the free block pool.
The M3 Pro is the third series of drives to ship with their Plextor's exclusive True Speed technology. By leveraging the power of advanced firmware, True Speed ensures that the SSD works at its full potential even after extensive use and long periods of operation. Along with support for TRIM, the M3 Pro's firmware incorporates Plextor's Bad Block Management, Global Wear Leveling and Instant Restore technologies. Where Bad Block Management and Global Wear Leveling optimize the way data is written on the drive, Instant Restore maintains "like new" performance by reorganizing data to maximize the number of free cells.
Plextor's True Speed technology works very well, as I saw very little performance degradation, even after hours of testing. I was finally able to overwhelm it by using Iometer to fill the entire drive and then running a random write test for 20 minutes. This had very little impact on the PX-256M3P's read speed. However, its average writing speed dropped to 114.4 MB/s when in this "dirty" state.
Plextor PX-256M3P - Dirty
To see how well the PX-256M3P could recover, I let the computer sit for a few hours and then reran the test. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the drive's average writing speed had increased to 268.9 MB/s.
Plextor PX-256M3P - After Instant Restore and TRIM
Lastly, I used LtnSSD to pre-format the PX-256M3P. With the drive wiped clean, its write speed jumped back up to 320.1 MB/s.
Plextor PX-256M3P - Wiped
Final Thoughts:
Plextor has knocked another one out of the park with its new M3 Pro Series SSD. Building on the success of the M3 Series, this ultra-slim drive combines Marvell's 88SS9174 controller with Toshiba's 24nm Toggle Mode NAND flash to deliver some of the best all around performance we've seen. Thanks to a highly optimized firmware, the PX-256M3P was able to read at speeds as high as 509 MB/s and writing at speeds in excess of 420 MB/s. These numbers still aren't as high as what we've seen with some of the newer SandForce-based drives like the SanDisk Extreme. However, the M3 Pro performs equally well with compressible and incompressible data and, thanks to technologies like Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling and Bad Block Management, is able to sustain these speeds, even after intensive use.
The M3 Pro Series is available now in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. Prices on Newegg currently range from $205 up to $680, with the PX-256M3P reviewed here going for about $375.
Highs:
- True Speed technology
- Available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities
- Excellent sequential read and write speeds
- Performs equally well with compressible and incompressible data
- Consistent performance, even after intensive usage
- SATA 6Gb/s interface
- Toggle NAND flash
- Massive 512MB cache on PX-256M3P and PX-512M3P
- Exclusive firmware with Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling and Bad Block Management
- Supports TRIM, SMART and NCQ
- Low power consumption
- Ultra-slim form factor
- Includes a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter bracket
- Includes NTI SSD Utility Suite
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Not as fast as SandForce-based SSDs when reading and writing compressible data
- Pricey