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, Samsung 960 PRO 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 M9Pe 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 Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Toshiba OCZ VX500, ADATA 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 and Samsung SSD 850 EVO.
As I mentioned earlier, the M9Pe 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 M9Pe 256GB |
 Patriot Hellfire 240GB |
According to Plextor, the 256GB version of the M9Pe is capable of reading at 3,000 MB/s and writing at 1,000 MB/s. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.
 Plextor M9Pe 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Patriot Hellfire 240GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The M9Pe performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 3041 MB/s and write at 1066 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the M9Pe'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 M9Pe had average read and write speeds of 1,298.7 MB/s and 289.6 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 931.1 MB/s. The screenshot also shows that, like most other TLC-based SSDs, the M9Pe uses some sort of SLC caching. The drive starts writing at about 1,050 MB/s and then drops to about 280 MB/s when the write operation exceeds the size of the cache. The cache on the 256GB version of the M9Pe is also surprisingly small. It appeared to be about 4GB in size, which is about 1.5% of the drive's total capacity.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the M9Pe'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 M9Pe 256GB |
 Patriot Hellfire 240GB |
When tested with ATTO, the M9Pe's read speeds topped out at about 2,997 MB/s and its write speeds at 1,060 MB/s.
