Sequential Performance – HDTach, HDTune, File Copy, YAPT (sequential)
We have shifted over to combining our results into two groupings for consumer reviews. First up is sequential performance:
I have included a different smapling in these charts than the PCIe heavy round included in the original M6e PCIe review. Check there to see those results. The Black should perform identically, as we will confirm below. We also included a RAID-0 pair of 850 EVOs, as we have had some requests to contrast those results against PCIe results.
HDTach:
HD Tach will test the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of your attached storage device (hard drive, flash drive, removable drive, etc). All drive technologies such as SCSI, IDE/ATA, 1394, USB, SATA and RAID are supported. HDTach tests sequential performance by issuing reads in a manner that was optimized more for HDD access, but this unique method has proven useful in evaluating the sequential response time of SSDs. The accesses are relatively small in size (2k), and are issued with a single working thread (QD=1). The end result is that devices with relatively IO high latency will not reach their ultimate rated speed.
Slight difference here between the M6e and M6e black, likely due to the Black being tested with a newer firmware revision.
HDTune:
HDTune tests a similar level of features as compared with HDTach, but with a different access pattern. Thus provides us with an additional set of benchmark numbers to compare between storage configurations. CPU utilization has proven negligible with modern processing horsepower, and is no longer included. Additionally, we do not include write performance due to HDTune's write access pattern not playing nicely with most SSDs we have tested it on.
HDTune uses much larger block transfer sizes than HDTach (when configured to do so). The M6e and M6e Black are able to gain another 100+ MB/sec over SATA units, but that can be overcome easily with a simple SATA RAID.
PCPer File Copy Test
Our custom PCPer-FC test does some fairly simple file creation and copy routines in order to test the storage system for speed. The script creates a set of files of varying sizes, times the creation process, then copies the same files to another partition on the same hard drive and times the copy process. There are four file sizes that we used to try and find any strong or weak points in the hardware: 10 files @ 1000 MB each, 100 files @ 100 MB each, 500 files @ 10 MB each and 1000 files at 1 MB each.
The tool that does the file creation does so in a single threaded manner, so the M6e's do perform well here, but they are still beaten by very low latency SATA devices like the Samsung 850 Pro and Crucial M550.
File copies uses the standard Windows copy, and the added threading of this operation gives the M6e a slight advantage here.
YAPT:
YAPT (yet another performance test) is a benchmark recommended by a pair of drive manufacturers and was incredibly difficult to locate as it hasn't been updated or used in quite some time. That doesn't make it irrelevant by any means though, as the benchmark is quite useful. It creates a test file of about 100 MB in size and runs both random and sequential read and write tests with it while changing the data I/O size in the process. The misaligned nature of this test exposes the read-modify-write performance of SSDs and Advanced Format HDDs.
Despite its age, YAPT is able to give is fairly accurate throughput figures for multi-GB/sec transfers. While the M6e reads and writes faster than all single SATA devices in this test.
Would be nice to see what
Would be nice to see what real world gains you get from so fast drive .
Agreed. I have asked Allyn
Agreed. I have asked Allyn in the past to start looking at real world benchmarks on SSD’s. While the synthetic benchmarks are good at creating an objective analysis on the strengths and weaknesses between SSD models and manufactures, it begs the question, “So, what? How does that benefit me?”
As a data storage engineer for workstation and HPC environments, I have argued that consumers should first look at their drive size requirements for buying an SSD (due to high cost/GB) and THEN look at specific features and performance (power protection, onboard encryption, high IOPS, etc).
Right now you could buy an inexpensive and high end SSD and they will perform very similar in real world examples: OS boot times and application loading.
I believe it would benefit readers to show that while synthetic benchmarks can show improvements or deficiencies in performance, “fast” is fast enough and that drive size, features and pricing should be the real conclusive factor.
“Plextor also made the M6e
“Plextor also made the M6e available with a half-height PCIe interposer”
On the first page; I don’t think interposer is the right word. It is just an adaptor card. Is plextor calling it an interposer? Interposer has a specific meaning which I don’t think is (or should be) confused with package or pcb.
“An interposer is an
"An interposer is an electrical interface routing between one socket or connection to another."
That's exactly what it is doing – electrically connecting M.2 PCIe to a desktop PCIe socket. I believe a lot of people just want to call it an adapter, but some also call it an interposer. I started calling it that when Intel kept referring to mSATA to SATA adapters as interposers.
Thank you for clarifying.
Thank you for clarifying. There are always a lot of semantic difficulties that I do not wish to needlessly multiply. Do you take interposer to specifically mean pass-through? That is, not bridging or translating different interfaces.
I thought I heard you say in
I thought I heard you say in the podcast that it has a backplate, could you add a photo of the backplate? Thanks.
Oh and nice work, Allyn
No back plate, but maybe I
No back plate, but maybe I was referring to the 'black' PCB?
Heh, yeah you probably was,
Heh, yeah you probably was, my bad.
I always go for the aesthetic look of PCI-e cards, so I want a gorgeous backplate! lol. Right now, ASUS ROG is the most cool looking one although the logo is upside down, bah.
Aside from topic, but Allyn, you might be able to send the message. 😉 I have a gripe on PCI-e cards. I believe most people have tower case(s) and won’t see the card’s face anyway. Even if you have horizontal case, you have to choose which card to show (being the closest to the window). Manufacturers beginning to spice up the tops but they also need to focus more on the backplate! Just sayin.
I’m right there with you, and
I'm right there with you, and that's why I personally use one of those 'inverted' ATX design cases (all the cards are face up).
I’d sacrifice most of that
I’d sacrifice most of that speed for 2x or 4x the capacity.
So who exactly would buy this
So who exactly would buy this over doing a RAID 0 setup? Unless you are running a server requiring high I/O I’m not getting the value add for the enthusiast market…
For this particular Marvell
For this particular Marvell PCIe controller, it's sort of a wash. That's why I included a RAID-0 pair of SSDs as a comparison point. We need NVMe or faster AHCI PCIe SSDs to make it worthwhile over a simple SATA RAID.