Plextor M5S 256GB SATA 3 SSD Review – True Speed Through and Through

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)

You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading!  Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta besting new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing.

ASU confirms much of what we already know including complete identification of the drive and test system.  It’s Total Point Score is higher than we might normally see and, given respect to the consistency of performance results we have seen thus far, we may just have a winner with PCMark Vantage.

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

• Windows Defender In Use
• Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
• Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
• Starting the Vista Operating System
• Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
• Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
• Cataloging a music library
• Starting applications

PLEXTOR M5S 256GB SATA 3 SSD VANTAGE PERFORMANCE

The M5S sailed through Vantage testing with a Total Point Score of 69047 points and a high transfer speed of 409MB/s while testing in Media Center.  In fact, six of the eight tests had final transfer speed performance well into the SATA 3 range which we don’t often see.

Lets pit the M5S with other SSDs we have tested in a bit of a Vantage comparison.  This hierarchy consists of the top new gen SSDs tested to date  and only takes the PCMark Vantage HDD Suite Total Score into account: