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Testing Samsung's XP941 On Z97 Express

A 1400 MB/s SSD: ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 And Samsung's XP941
By

In most of the stories we write, it doesn't matter where Windows is installed. Storage testing is a bit different though, particularly when we need to turn off the PCH's SATA ports. Thus, utilizing Windows to Go makes a lot of sense. A fully-functioning image can be ported from one machine to another over USB 3.0. It's just as quick as an installation to a SATA-attached SSD, and it enables testing methodologies otherwise considered impractical.

Note also that we're using Intel's new Rapid Storage Technology 13-series driver. It doesn't have much bearing on today's story; the fancier features will get rolled into a version of the RST software later this year. But it was time to upgrade, and so I have.

Test Hardware
ProcessorIntel Core i5-4670K (Haswell), 22 nm, 3.3 GHz, LGA 1150, 6 MB Shared L3, Turbo Boost Enabled
MotherboardASRock Z97 Extreme6
MemoryG.Skill Ripjaws 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1866 @ DDR3-1333, 1.5 V
System Drive Muskin Ventura Ultra 240 GB USB 3.0 UASP
Drive(s) Under TestSamsung MZHPU512HCGL-00000 512 GB M.2 Gen 2 x4 PCIe, AHCI
Power Supply
Seasonic X400 FL2, 80+ Platinum
ChassisLian Li A01-NB ATX
HSF
Noctua NH-L9i
Graphics
Intel HD Graphics 4600
OS
Windows 8.1 Enterprise, Windows to Go
Drivers
STORAHCI.SYS (Generic AHCI), Intel RST 13.1 (SATA)
Comparison DrivesPlextor M6e 256 GB M.2 PCIe x2, Firmware: 1.00

Plextor M6S 256 GB SATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: 1.00

Plextor M6M 256 GB mSATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: 1.00

Adata SP920 256 GB SATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: MU01

Crucial M550 512 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: MU01

Intel SSD 730 480 GB SATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: L2010400

SanDisk X210 512 GB, Firmware X210400

Crucial M500 240 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: MU02

Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: EXT0AB0Q

Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware DXM04B0Q

Seagate 600 SSD 240 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: B660

OCZ Vector 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: 2.0

Plextor M5 Pro 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s Firmware: 1.02
Benchmarks
ULINK DriveMaster 2012
DM2012 v980, JEDEC 218A-based TRIM Test, Protocol Test Suite
Test Specific Hardware
SAS/SATA Power Hub, DevSlp Platform, PCIe SSD Power Adapter
Tom's Hardware Storage Bench v1.0
Intel iPeak Storage Toolkit 5.2.1, Tom's Storage Bench 1.0 Trace Recording
Iometer 1.1.0# Workers = 1, 4 KB Random: LBA=16 GB, varying QDs, 128 KB Sequential, 16 GB LBA Precondition, Exponential QD Scaling
PCMark 8
PCMark 8 2.0.228, Storage Consistency Test
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  • 0 Hide
    tuvok , 5 June 2014 16:26
    Seems like a good enough trade off, dropped to 8X on the graphics card lanes.
    I mean the difference on pci express 3 with 8X V 16X is not even noticeable on all but the very fastest cards even then its only a few fps. Two 780ti for example are not bottlenecked whatsoever in that mode and if you can afford that, you'd be using a hex core.
  • 0 Hide
    tuvok , 5 June 2014 16:34
    Can the author please clarify if SLI is out, because A. It will not work at all when using the M.2 or B. that it just robs SLI of bandwidth while the storage system is being maxed. If it is a case of just sharing bandwidth, then the storage is hit the hardest at the start of the level load and its not actually rendering frames. Worth testing to see.
  • 0 Hide
    CyberAngel , 5 June 2014 19:45
    Waiting for Skylake and/or a laptop with two of these...
  • 0 Hide
    IRONBATMAN , 8 June 2014 15:28
    I like the illustrations :p