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. I should also point out that our test system is not equipped with an mSATA port so we had to use an mSATA to SATA 6 Gb/s adapter card.
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 OCZ Vector, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Samsung SSD 840, Kingston Ultra Plus, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Agility 4, Kingston SSDNow V300, Kingston HyperX 3K and SanDisk Extreme.
Like the original M5 Pro and M5Pro Xtreme, the M5M 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-256M5M |
 Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme |
According to Plextor, the PX-256M5M is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 430 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-256M5M - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The PX-256M5M performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 506.4 MB/s and write at 408.8 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the PX-256M5M'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-256M5M had average read and write speeds of 407.5 MB/s and 325.3 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 397.5 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the PX-256M5M'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-256M5M |
 Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme |
When tested with ATTO, the PX-256M5M's read speeds topped out at about 538 MB/s and its write speeds at 441 MB/s.
