Plextor Unveils Latest M9Pe Extreme Ultra Hi-Speed NVMe SSD

[Chino]

PLEXTOR, a leading developer of award-winning solid-state drives (SSDs) and other high-performance digital storage devices, showcased the new M9Pe Extreme at COMPUTEX 2018, Taipei, Taiwan. Breaking consumer SSD speed barriers, the new M9Pe Extreme delivers astonishing sequential read/write speeds of up to 6,500 / 5,000 MB/s. The next-generation M9Pe Extreme combines technologically advanced components and the Marvell 88NR2241 intelligent NVMe switch along with PLEXTOR exclusive technologies to deliver high level performance required by prosumers, professional PC gamers and other application-intensive users such as animation editors, audio-visual drafting personnel, and film-making companies. Not only does M9Pe Extreme provide greatly enhanced data transmission performance, it also offers RAID functionalities for data redundancy and performance improvements making it a great choice for office or workspace environments.

Fay Ho, Senior Director for Brand Division, LITE-ON Technology Corporation, said, "Continuing Plextor's outstanding capability in the high-speed storage devices, the M9Pe Extreme, as the name states, delivers unprecedented extreme high-speed performance, making a new record in consumer SSD read/write speeds. With high quality components and excellent performance boosting technologies, PC gaming experience, for one, will never be the same."


Nigel Alvares, vice president of SSD and Data Center Storage Solutions at Marvell, said, "Marvell and LITE-ON have a longstanding relationship of SSD collaborations and we're excited to expand it by enabling their innovative M9Pe Extreme SSD with our 88NR2241, the industry's first NVMe switch. Our intelligent NVMe switch technology combined with Plextor's storage expertise delivers a groundbreaking solution to meet the increasing storage demands of emerging high-performance client and edge applications."

The key to the performance breakthrough lies in Plextor's solid and unique development capabilities and the adoption of the Marvell intelligent NVMe switch and industry-leading components. The combination of Plextor's latest improvements in multiple error-detection and firmware technologies comprehensively reinforces storage reliability, read/write quality, and long-term service life of its SSDs.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Gasaraki]

"sequential read/write speeds of up to 6,500 / 5,000 MB/s"? Umm, OK sure Plextor. Whatever you say. Suddenly your drive is double the speed of the fastest Samsung 970 Pro drive? I'll believe it when I see benchmarks.

 

[xkm1948]

So the limitation of current NvME bandwidth is gone?

 

[bug]

"Extreme Ultra Hi-Speed" my ass.
850 EVO is slightly faster than this in 4k random reads: http://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/storage/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/4/

 

[Ruru]

I would like to see the loading times of Battlefield 4.

 

[Teiji]

Why do seq speed improve so much for every new generation of (NVMe) SSD, but 4k speed are still so shit?

 

[BadFrog]

Sounds like RAID array for those speeds. Marvell mentions you can manage resources across multiple controllers on their website. But idk

 

[TheLostSwede]

This explains what's going on - https://www.anandtech.com/show/1295...s-4way-m9pe-extreme-ssd-solution-up-to-65-gbs
Very poor press release that clearly doesn't tell a quarter of the story...

 

[radrok]

Useless sequential metrics, the real improvement lies in 4k randoms.

Optane 900p rapes this thing where it matters.

 

[Hood]

It's just a huge 4-wayRAID card, with a PCIe x 8 switch, which means that your super expensive RAID array will not get the full 16 x bandwidth, like the Asrock 4-way card. As @radrok pointed out, sequential speed is not the important metric, latency and 4k random IOPS matter a lot more in everyday use.

 

[Forsvinner]

This SSD is working with 8 pci lanes? Standard SSD NVMe work with x4, and his max bandwitch is about 4GB/s

 

[Blueberries]

"Extreme Ultra Hi-Speed" my ass.
850 EVO is slightly faster than this in 4k random reads: http://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/storage/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/4/

The link you provided says quite the opposite.

850: 407 / 372
MPe: 491 / 458

Making it 20.6% faster at 4k random reads. Either way, CDM is a terrible benchmark for NVMe drives.

 

[bug]

The link you provided says quite the opposite.

850: 407 / 372
MPe: 491 / 458

Making it 20.6% faster at 4k random reads. Either way, CDM is a terrible benchmark for NVMe drives.

You're not reading the part that matters.

Why do seq speed improve so much for every new generation of (NVMe) SSD, but 4k speed are still so shit?

4k random performance is actually limited by the flash itself. No amount of parallelizing or controller magic can work around that.
Continuously cramming more and more bits onto a cell doesn't help things either (though that's needed for other purposes).

 

[Blueberries]

You're not reading the part that matters.

What? Single QD? That hasn't improved in years. Even the 905P performs similarly. 4-16QD is what really matters but that's not shown here. Still, one can extrapolate that the M9Pe is considerably faster.

 

[bug]

What? Single QD? That hasn't improved in years. Even the 905P performs similarly. 4-16QD is what really matters but that's not shown here. Still, one can extrapolate that the M9Pe is considerably faster.

It all depends on the workload. A heavily used home computer will probably hit QD4. You do the math.
And yes, there are legitimate usage patterns that justify a NVMe drive. But for the vast majority of users QD1 is where it's at.

 

[Zubasa]

The link you provided says quite the opposite.

850: 407 / 372
MPe: 491 / 458

Making it 20.6% faster at 4k random reads. Either way, CDM is a terrible benchmark for NVMe drives.

What? Single QD? That hasn't improved in years. Even the 905P performs similarly. 4-16QD is what really matters but that's not shown here. Still, one can extrapolate that the M9Pe is considerably faster.

You noticed that you qouted the Queue Depth 32 numbers right?
While even yourself stated that lower QD is what matters. On a PC the QD of an SSD hard ever reaches over QD 4, pretty much never reaches QD8.

 

[Blueberries]

It all depends on the workload. A heavily used home computer will probably hit QD4. You do the math.
And yes, there are legitimate usage patterns that justify a NVMe drive. But for the vast majority of users QD1 is where it's at.

If both drives were equivalently priced, would you prefer the 850?

 

[bug]

If both drives were equivalently priced, would you prefer the 850?

Weirdly, yes.
The way this works, installing one NVMe drive disables two SATA ports. Since I currently have several drives installed, SATA makes more sense for me. Ymmv though.

One other thing: there are NVMe drives that are about 20% faster than SATA drives in 4k random reads, if you're after NVMe I'd look for one of those, not this one right here.

 

[radrok]

What? Single QD? That hasn't improved in years. Even the 905P performs similarly. 4-16QD is what really matters but that's not shown here. Still, one can extrapolate that the M9Pe is considerably faster.

900p performs around 250/300 MBs on Q1, reaches 700MBs on Q4

Where'd you get your info?

 

[Blueberries]

900p performs around 250/300 MBs on Q1, reaches 700MBs on Q4

Where'd you get your info?

You're right, I had to look again. I remembered it being closer to the 970 but after looking again it is much faster.

One other thing: there are NVMe drives that are about 20% faster than SATA drives in 4k random reads, if you're after NVMe I'd look for one of those, not this one right here.

Yes, I would never buy Toshiba when there are much more reliable Samsung products. I've been using Samsung ICs exclusively for years now, Micron if my arm is really being twisted but never Toshiba.

Still, I wouldn't say this is slower than a SATA drive.

 

[bug]

Still, I wouldn't say this is slower than a SATA drive.

Considering you're doing random reads like 80-90% of the time, it is slower. And it's slower than the 850 EVO, a newer SATA drive will probably just further that difference.
However, my problem isn't that it's slower. It's the placing of "Extreme Ultra Hi-Speed" on a drive that absolutely isn't.

 

[metalkhor]

What is the liquid cooler doing there?

it does not cool anything at all!? seems like plextor just needed the rgb lighting.

 

[Woomack]

This drive uses PCIe x16 slot so it can make more than ~3.5GB/s. 2x NVMe M.2 SSD in R0 can make up to ~7GB/s so it's nothing really special. Also, 4K results are scaling like in R0 so I guess there is something like R0 design under the heatsink. In a typical setup, 4K is going down in the RAID. Even if you RAID0 Samsung 970 then you get ~40MB/s in 4K1T read in CDM.

Sequential bandwidth is what marketing promotes. Most users have no idea how SSD work and don't know how to compare real performance. They see high numbers so they buy the product. In reality, there are barely any changes in most SSD in past ~2-3 years. The only exception is Optane but prices are ridiculous.

 

[bug]

Sequential bandwidth is what marketing promotes. Most users have no idea how SSD work and don't know how to compare real performance. They see high numbers so they buy the product. In reality, there are barely any changes in most SSD in past ~2-3 years. The only exception is Optane but prices are ridiculous.

Marketing does what marketing does. My problem is when websites we rely on simply parrot info from marketing departments without context, emphasis or additional warnings.

 

[Caring1]

What is the liquid cooler doing there?

it does not cool anything at all!? seems like plextor just needed the rgb lighting.

GPU mounted on the reverse side of the Motherboard?

This drive uses PCIe x16 slot so it can make more than ~3.5GB/s. 2x NVMe M.2 SSD in R0 can make up to ~7GB/s so it's nothing really special. Also, 4K results are scaling like in R0 so I guess there is something like R0 design under the heatsink.

It's stated in the write up, although not very clearly that Raid is used.
"it also offers RAID functionalities for data redundancy and performance improvements making it a great choice for office or workspace environments."