PlexTurbo 2.0, Conclusion, and Final Thoughts
PlexTurbo:
With the release of the M6e Black Edition, Plextor also announced an update to their Plextools suite.
This new update includes an improved version of PlexTurbo, which is Plextor's DRAM caching solution. The update increases maximum DRAM usage to 3.8GB and introduces an 'Write Through Plus' caching style that, sparing an overly complicated description, keep caching performance high while also minimizing the chance/amount of data loss should power be interrupted during a large write. PlexTurbo 2.0 can be enabled on the M6 PRO (SATA) and all three variants of the M6e (M.2, PCIe, PCIe Black). For those on PlexTurbo 1.0, the recommended update process is to disable PlexTurbo prior to updating to Plextools 1.1.6 and enabling PlexTurbo 2.0.
SSD DRAM accelerators like PlexTurbo and Samsung's Rapid don't show much improvement on the full drive / large file workloads we typically run, however they *do* accelerate things when small file workloads are concentrated within a capacity that can fit within the DRAM cache. One good example to demonstrate this effect is with ATTO. Here's the M6e by itself:
…and now with PlexTurbo 2.0 enabled:
That funky pattern is not an inconsistency of ATTO but is actually a side effect of ATTO never being coded to handle such high throughput figures. Note that the scale 'pegged' at a 32 bit integer value (2^32). With PlexTurbo 2.0, the speeds are actually ramping up and rolling over the maximum value, starting back at zero. With large enough transfer sizes (at the very bottom), it actually rolls over this value twice – easily confirmed with Task Manager:
For comparison, Samsung's Rapid tops out at ~6GB/sec with a SATA SSD connected. That actually brings up another good point – PlexTurbo is currently the only such solution that can accelerate PCIe as well as SATA SSDs.
Conclusion:
PROS:
- Good sequential performance
- IOPS performance at lower queue depths comparable to high end SATA units
- Cost/GB is competitive for a PCIe SSD
- No driver required – uses the standard Windows Inbox SCSIPort driver
- PlexTurbo 2.0 available for previous M6e models
- Bootable
CONS:
- PCIe 2.0 x2 link not fully utilized by Marvell controller
- Black Edition version priced at a high premium over the base M.2 version
- Warranty VOID sticker prevents penalty-free conversion between PCIe and M.2 form factor
Pricing and Availability:
Plextor M6e Black Edition – available for pre-order exclusively at Newegg (Feb 12, 2015):
Plextor M6e PCIe:
Plextor M6e M.2:
Compared to the RevoDrive 350, currently at:
Note that we are using pre-order prices for the Black Edition, and current market prices for all other items listed. The M6e PCIe was priced higher at launch as well, but did come down in price in the months after launch. The intro price of the Black appears too high to justify what is really just an improvement in aesthetics, so we suspect those prices should come down fairly soon after launch. As a more important note, there is an $80 spread between the Black Edition and the bare M.2 unit, and that difference in price may be enough to sway people towards upgrading to an M.2 capable motherboard with that cost savings.
Warranty:
The Plextor M6e Black Edition will ship with a 5-year warranty, while competing PCIe units (G.Skill Phoenix Blade / OCZ RevoDrive) carry a 3 year warranty.
Final Thoughts:
Plextor has certainly pushed the fit, finish, and looks of their M6e PCIe SSD with the new Black Edition. The new color scheme does well to match newer black and red motherboards and GPUs. While it is awesome to look at, Plextor's changes were mostly cosmetic. The heatsink is functional but is not absolutely necessary for this relatively low power SSD. Since the power draw is on the low side, PCIe power is more than sufficient, rendering the SATA power connector a little more than an interesting talking point. The activity pin header is the most useful option, allowing for a case HDD LED to directly monitor the M6e Black's activity. One unwelcome addition was the warranty sticker, which has no place on an item that contains a user removable / replaceable part. The internal M.2 SSD is the exact same part as what can be purchased individually (and that part maintains its 5-year warranty when installed by the purchaser). Purchasers who intend to upgrade to an M.2 capable motherboard could purchase the bare M.2 M6e and a PCIe adapter for cheaper than the Black Edition. Sure it would not look as great, but at least they would not void their warranty during the upgrade process. All of that said, the M6e Black Edition is an awesome looking SSD that would look great in any color matched / modded system.
(Yes, it's expensive, but it does look great and performs well)
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.