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Results: PCMark 8 Storage Consistency Test

A 1400 MB/s SSD: ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 And Samsung's XP941
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PCMark 8's Storage Consistency test is fast becoming my favorite canned benchmark. Usually, that's code for lazy benchmarking. But the folks at Futuremark really came up with something stellar using PCMark 8's real-world workloads. What we end up with are trace-based tests played back to back, with specific conditioning that happens prior to each round. I've gone into a lot of depth on this in past reviews, so if you'd like to know more, I invite you to go back and read the background page.

PCMark 8 Storage Consistency Test: Bandwidth

PCMark 8's Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) trace is far and away the most intensive of the trace bundle. That's why we use it to show latency and bandwidth data for each of the 18 constituent rounds.

I'll let you guess which line on the graph represents Samsung's XP941.

Have you figured it out yet? Here's a hint: it's the fastest one. And not by a small amount, either. The XP941 serves up a benchmark-setting 700 MB/s in the recovery rounds. It dips as low as 500 MB/s in the debilitating degrade phase, which is simply unheard of. Even attached to the Z97 PCH's two-lane M.2 slot, it's still intensely quick. There's just a less capable interface supporting it.

Samsung's XP941 is as much as 20x faster than some of the quickest 6 Gb/s SSDs in this particular trace from this particular benchmark (that is to say our results don't necessarily map over to other workloads). It's hard to overlook the crushing defeat Plextor's M6e (in purple) and Samsung's own 840 EVO (in orange) sustain at the hands of this M.2 drive.

Despite my skepticism of AHCI-based PCIe storage, Samsung at least shows its XP941 to be an exception to the rule.

And here are the overall scores, showing the best and worst scores across PCMark 8's 18 rounds. No surprise, Samsung's XP941 owns the top tier. ASRock's Ultra M.2 slot hosting Samsung M.2 drive pushes as high as 5016 PCMarks. Attached to the PCH's M.2 interface, it registers a score of 4999.

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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...
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    IRONBATMAN , 8 June 2014 15:28
    I like the illustrations :p