The test system used in this review is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 memory, Plextor SU800 512GB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise.
To test the performance of Plextor's M8Pe SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Toshiba OCZ VX500, Plextor Ultimate SU800, Plextor S2C, Crucial M300, Plextor M7V, PNY CS1311, OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180, Samsung SSD 850 EVO and Samsung SSD 850 PRO.
As I mentioned earlier, the M8Pe is based on Marvell's 88SS1093 controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2:
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 M8Pe 512GB |
 Samsung 960 PRO 512GB |
According to Plextor, the 512GB version of the M8Pe is capable of reading at 2,300 MB/s and writing at 1,300 MB/s. While the drive performed better than expected when reading, it came up a bit short in CrystalDiskMark's sequential write speed test.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the M8Pe's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Plextor M8Pe 512GB
The M8Pe's performance was hit and miss when tested with HD Tach. While the drive was able to write at 1,151.6 MB/s, its read speed averaged out at only 1304.5 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the M8Pe'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 M8Pe 512GB |
 Samsung 960 PRO 512GB |
When tested with ATTO, the M8Pe's read speeds topped out at about 2,470 MB/s and its write speeds at 1,290 MB/s.
