Model: Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme 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 NAS devices, external hard drives and a growing number of solid state drives.

Like many other manufacturers, Plextor has set its sights on the growing solid-state drive (SSD) market. Last fall, the company launched its M5 Pro Series (M5P) SSD. Designed for business and advanced users, this professional-grade SSD combined Marvell's 88SS9187 "Monet" controller with Toshiba's 19nm Toggle Mode NAND to deliver up to 540MB/s read and 450MB/s write transfer rates. It also included features like Plextor's exclusive True Speed technology as well as a unique double-data protection system to protect the integrity and confidentiality of your data.

Plextor has now released its M5Pro Xtreme SSD. While based on the same Marvell 88SS9187 controller chip as the M5 Pro Series, this new drive offers a number of improvements. Along with a newly engineered and redesigned PCB board, the M5 Pro Xtreme comes equipped with the recently released Xtreme firmware update as well as Toshiba’s latest 19nm Toggle Mode MLC NAND flash. The end result is an SSD capable of delivering random read speeds up to 100,000 IOPS along with 540 MB/s sequential read and 470 MB/s sequential write speeds.

For this review, Plextor sent us the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme. This 256GB SSD comes equipped with 512MB of on-board cache and is capable of delivering up to 540MB/s sequential read and 460MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 100,000 random read and 86,000 random write IOPS.

   Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme 256GB Solid State Drive
General Specifications
Capacity 256GB
Flash Type Toshiba 19nm Toggle Mode NAND
Controller Marvell 88SS9187 "Monet"
Cache 512MB DDR3
Form Factor 2.5-inch
Interface SATA III 6Gb/s

Performance
Sequential Read 540 MB/s Max
Sequential Write 460 MB/s Max
Random Read (IOPS 4K) 100,000 Max
Random Write (IOPS 4K) 86,000 Max

Power Consumption
MobileMark 0.25W

Environment and Reliability
Temperature (Operating) 32 ºF to 158 ºF (0 ºC to 70 ºC)
Shock 1500G, 1 ms
Vibration (Operating) 7~800Hz, 2.17G (RMS)
MTBF 2.4 million hours

Dimensions and Weight
Dimensions 69.85 mm x 100 mm x 7 mm
Weight 70g

Other Features
Exclusive True Speed technology
True Protect double-data protection system
Instant Restore function
Global Wear-Leveling
Bad Block Management
Supports TRIM, SMART, NCQ, ATA/ATAPI-8
256-bit AES encryption
Firmware upgradeable
Includes 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket and NTI SSD Utility Suite
Five year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme 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-256M5Pro Xtreme 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.



 

The M5Pro Xtreme 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 and True Protect technologies and the ability to reach 100,000 IOPS. 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 and warranty card. Unlike the M5 Pro, the M5Pro Xtreme does not come with a CD containing NTI's SSD Utility Suite. Instead, Plextor has provided installation keys for NTI Echo and Backup Now EZ, as well as a link where both programs can be downloaded.

Physical Features:

Like Plextor's previous SSDs, the M5Pro Xtreme 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 M5Pro Xtreme'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.

Like the M5 Pro, the M5Pro Xtreme uses Marvell's new 88SS9187 "Monet" controller. The 88SS9187 is powered by a dual-core Marvell 88FR102 V5 CPU and supports up to eight NAND flash channels. The controller also features a high-performance ECC engine with adaptive read and write scheme as well as on-chip RAID functionality.

The biggest difference between the M5 Pro and the M5Pro Xtreme is the PCB design. Where the M5 Pro uses the "M3S" PCB that was first introduced in Plextor's M2P series, the M5Pro Xtreme is based on the new "M6S" PCB. Instead of NAND flash in a BGA (Ball Grid Array) package, this new design supports TSOP (Thin Small-Outline Package) where the pins are located along the two shorter edges. According to Plextor, heat dissipation is better with TSOP so thermal pads are not needed.

For the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Plextor has opted to use Toshiba's 19nm TH58TEG7DDJTA20 Toggle Mode NAND flash chips. Looking at the pictures above, you can see that there are eight of these chips on either side of the PCB. The drive also has two 256MB Nanya H5TQ2G63DFR-PBC 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 Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, 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, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Kingston SSDNow V300, Silicon Power S70, Plextor PX-256M5P (1.01 and 1.02 Xtreme firmware), OCZ Vertex 4, Kingston HyperX 3K and SanDisk Extreme.

Like the original M5 Pro, the new M5Pro Xtreme is based on Marvel's 88SS9187 controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see 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-256M5Pro Xtreme

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB

According to Plextor, the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 460 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-256M5Pro Xtreme - All 0x00, 0Fill

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill

The PX-256M5Pro Xtreme performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 505.8 MB/s and write at 436.8 MB/s.

HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:

Next, I used HD Tach to test the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme'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-256M5Pro Xtreme had average read and write speeds of 417.2 MB/s and 360.2 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 339.3 MB/s.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme'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-256M5Pro Xtreme

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB

When tested with ATTO, the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme's read speeds topped out at about 558 MB/s and its write speeds at 461 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-256M5Pro Xtreme

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB

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-256M5Pro Xtreme

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB

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-256M5Pro Xtreme's random read and write speeds, random access times and the number of operations per second.


Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - HD Tune Read Benchmark

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - HD Tune Read Benchmark


Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - HD Tune Write Benchmark

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - HD Tune Write Benchmark

The PX-256M5Pro Xtreme performed very well when benchmarked with HD Tune. The drive had average read and write speeds of 499.4 MB/s and 414.6 MB/s, respectively, and a burst rate of 378.2 MB/s when reading


Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - HD Tune Random Access Read

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - HD Tune Random Access Read


Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - HD Tune Random Access Write

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - HD Tune Random Access Write

The PX-256M5Pro Xtreme didn't disappoint when doing random reads and writes. When writing 4KB blocks, the drive reached 18,902 IOPS and had an average speed of 73.838 MB/s. The PX-256M5Pro Xtreme was even faster when reading, reaching 22,428 IOPS with an average speed of 87.612 MB/s.


Anvil's Storage Utilities:

Anvil's Storage Utilities is another new benchmark designed with SSDs in mind. The standard storage benchmark measures a drive's performance by testing its transfer speeds, access times and IOPS.

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-256M5Pro Xtreme'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-256M5Pro Xtreme's performance was very similar to what we saw in our other tests. The drive was able to read at 529.35 MB/s and write at 438.91 MB/s.

The PX-256M5Pro Xtreme also performed pretty well when doing random reads and writes. In our tests, the drive was able to read at 154.68 MB/s and write at 249.23 MB/s.

According to Plextor, the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme is capable of 100,000 IOPS when reading and 86,000 IOPS when writing 4K blocks. In our tests, the drive reached 39,598 random read IOPS and 63,804 random write IOPS. The only way I came close to Plextor's numbers was to increase the queue depth. With the queue depth set to 32, the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme reached 97,731 random read IOPS and 81,776 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 M5Pro Xtreme is the latest drive 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 M5Pro Xtreme'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 30 minutes. This had little impact on the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme's read speed. However, its average writing speed dropped to 31.0 MB/s when in this "dirty" state.


PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - Dirty

I let the computer sit for a few hours and then reran the test. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme's average write speed had increased to a mere 37.4 MB/s. Needless to say, this was not the result I expected, especially when you consider how well the original M5 Pro did in this test.


PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - After TRIM

I contacted Plextor regarding this issue and they pointed out that the M5Pro Xtreme uses a new garbage collection algorithm which can only partially restore the drive's performance. To fully restore the M5Pro Xtreme you need to trigger TRIM and, for whatever reason, this was not happening in our tests.

With this in mind, I went back and reran the test using AS SSD instead of HD Tach. AS SSD isn't as low level as HD Tach nor does it produce a nice looking graph. However, it does let us test a drive's read and write speeds without having to delete the volume. Once again, I used Iometer to fill the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme and put it into a "dirty" state. This had very little effect on the drive's read speed. However, its sequential write speed dropped to 46.94 MB/s


PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - Dirty

I let the computer sit for about 30 minutes and then reran the test. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme's average write speed had increased to 437.72 MB/s.


PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - After TRIM

Lastly, I used Plextor's Plextool software to perform a secure erase of the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme. With the drive wiped clean, it had average read and write speeds of 512.77 MB/s and 450.63 MB/s, respectively.


PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - Secure Erase

Final Thoughts:

On the surface, the M5Pro Xtreme may seem more evolutionary than revolutionary, but Plextor's engineers have put a lot of effort into this upgraded version of the M5 Pro. Along with the recently released Xtreme firmware, the M5Pro Xtreme uses a newly engineered and redesigned PCB board that combines Marvell's 88SS9187 controller with Toshiba’s latest 19nm Toggle Mode MLC NAND flash. As you'd expect, this combination produced some impressive performance numbers. In our sequential read and write tests, the PX-256M5Pro Xtreme was able to read at speeds as high as 558 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 436 MB/s. It also did reasonably well our random write tests, producing more than 63,000 IOPS at low queue depths. Increasing the queue depth did lead to better results. However, the M5Pro Xtreme still had a hard time keeping up with the latest offerings from OCZ and Samsung.

The M5Pro Xtreme is available now in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. Prices on Amazon.com currently range from $129 up to $464, with the 256GB version reviewed here going for about $240.

Highs:

  • True Speed technology
  • Available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities
  • Excellent sequential read and write speeds
  • Very good random read performance
  • Performs equally well with compressible and incompressible data
  • Consistent performance, even after intensive usage
  • SATA 6Gb/s interface
  • Toggle Mode NAND flash
  • Large DRAM cache
  • Exclusive firmware with Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling and Bad Block Management
  • True-Protect double-data protection technology
  • 256-bit AES encryption
  • Supports TRIM, SMART and NCQ
  • Ultra-slim form factor
  • Includes a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter bracket
  • Includes NTI SSD Utility Suite
  • 5 year warranty

Lows:

  • Random write performance at low queue depths could be better
  • Pricey