Plextor Releases M5 Pro SSD: Say Hello to Marvell 88SS9187 and 19nm Toshiba NAND
by Kristian Vättö on August 7, 2012 2:57 PM ESTThis is an announcement we have been waiting for. In our Plextor M3 Pro and M5S reviews, we mentioned that the limits of Marvell's 88SS9174 controller have more or less been reached and it's time to switch to more powerful silicon, and that's exactly what Plextor has done now. Plextor's M5 Pro is the first SSD to publicly use Marvell's new 88SS9187 controller (OCZ's Vertex 4 and Agility 4 use Marvell silicon, but the specific silicon hasn't been confirmed). Marvell released the controller back in March, but as always, it takes time for manufacturers to design a product based around a new controller. Validation alone can take over a year if done thoroughly.
Not only is Plextor using a brand new controller, the M5 Pro is also the first consumer SSD to use Toshiba's 19nm Toggle-Mode MLC NAND.
Plextor M5 Pro Specifications | |||
Capacity | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB |
Controller | Marvell 88SS9187 | ||
NAND | Toshiba 19nm Toggle-Mode MLC NAND | ||
Sequential Read | 540MB/s | 540MB/s | 540MB/s |
Sequential Write | 340MB/s | 450MB/s | 450MB/s |
4K Random Read | 91K IOPS | 94K IOPS | 94K IOPS |
4K Random Write | 82K IOPS | 86K IOPS | 86K IOPS |
Cache (DDR3) | 256MB | 512MB | 768MB |
Warranty | 5 years | ||
Availability | Mid-August 2012 |
Sequential speeds have not changed much since the M3 Pro but random read/write speeds have gone up significantly. Random speeds are up by as much as 52K IOPS but most increases settle between 10K-20K IOPS. Since the M5 Pro is Plextor's high-end model, it also supports full 256-bit AES encryption, something that will definitely be appreciated by professional and enterpise users.
Pricing is to be announced but I would expect the M5 Pro to be priced similarly to what the M3 Pro is currently selling for. Exact availability is still unknown but Plextor is saying mid-August 2012 in the press release, so we should see this drive retailing in a few weeks. Our review sample is already on its way here so stay tuned for our review.
23 Comments
View All Comments
Beenthere - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
It seems that some of the increased performance in recent months on SandForce based SSDs may be at the expense of the TRIM feature - which can result in a big loss of performance over time.http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4870/lsi_sandfor...
lunadesign - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
Is this drive going to be reviewed by AnandTech soon?scbdpa - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
i guess this one won't be reviewed?