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CES 2015: Plextor M7e PCIe SSD Real World Performance Is Double the Old One

Instead of 770 MB/s, it got roughly 1.4 GB/s in tests
  Plextor M7e PCI Express SSD


Last week, we reported on the official release of the Plextor M6e Black Edition series of solid state drives, and how their performance wasn't quite what we were expecting from PCI Express drives. It seems like the relevant parties heard us.
Or, rather, the relevant parties knew well enough to predict that ambivalent (at best) reaction on the part of onlookers. The relevant parties being the Plextor product designers.

That's why there was a second series of Plextor SSDs at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015).

Said product line was called M7e PCI Express SSD and is meant to be the next high-end flagship NAND Flash-based product line.

Plextor's M7e PCI Express SSDs

While they haven't yet been formally launched, Plextor did say that it was getting them ready for official release some time in the not too distant future.

The Marvell 88SS9293 controller drives the drives, as opposed to the Marvell 88SS9183 found in the M6e Black Edition.

This chip is largely responsible for the high transfer speeds that the newcomers can achieve, although the Toshiba A19 MLC NAND chips didn't hurt (MLC means multi-level cell).

Plextor did not release official performance numbers, but the folks at CES 2015 tested the living daylights out of the storage unit under CrystalDiskMark. The live benchmark demo showed a read speed of 1,411 MB/s and a write speed of 1,028 MB/s.

The speed is possible thanks to the port of the M.2 form factor unit being wired through the PCI Express 2.0 x4 interface.

There are only one or two M.2 SSDs currently in existence which can overcome this performance, and you're not likely to find them up for sale anywhere either. Speaking of which...

Availability and pricing

The Plextor M7e PCI Express SSD line in the M.2 form factor will sell with or without a PCI Express 2.0 rise card. That means that even if your desktop motherboard doesn't have an M.2 slot, you'll still be able to use the product if you have a free PCIe one, which is usually the case even on Micro-ATX platforms.

The M.2 model will probably be used more in laptops (and maybe tablets), since that's where space efficiency is needed most.

Unfortunately, we can't provide an exact date of arrival, or even a vague ETA (estimated time of arrival) because Plextor, at CES 2015, only stated the new line was “coming soon,” which can mean a lot of things.

Plextor M7e PCI Express SSD test
Plextor M7e PCI Express SSD test

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