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

Features
By published

Z97 ushers in new and exciting ways to attach and use storage devices. With support for M.2 PCIe and SATA Express, two sides of the same SSD coin, Z97 improves on Z87. But not everywhere. AsRock add to Z97 with some new tricks, and so we take a look.

Testing Samsung's XP941 On Z97 Express

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.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
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 DriveMuskin Ventura Ultra 240 GB USB 3.0 UASP
Drive(s) Under TestSamsung MZHPU512HCGL-00000 512 GB M.2 Gen 2 x4 PCIe, AHCI
Power SupplySeasonic X400 FL2, 80+ Platinum
ChassisLian Li A01-NB ATX
HSFNoctua NH-L9i
GraphicsIntel HD Graphics 4600
OSWindows 8.1 Enterprise, Windows to Go
DriversSTORAHCI.SYS (Generic AHCI), Intel RST 13.1 (SATA)
Comparison DrivesPlextor M6e 256 GB M.2 PCIe x2, Firmware: 1.00
Row 12 - Cell 0 Plextor M6S 256 GB SATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: 1.00
Row 13 - Cell 0 Plextor M6M 256 GB mSATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: 1.00
Row 14 - Cell 0 Adata SP920 256 GB SATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: MU01
Row 15 - Cell 0 Crucial M550 512 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: MU01
Row 16 - Cell 0 Intel SSD 730 480 GB SATA 6 Gb/s, Firmware: L2010400
Row 17 - Cell 0 SanDisk X210 512 GB, Firmware X210400
Row 18 - Cell 0 Crucial M500 240 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: MU02
Row 19 - Cell 0 Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: EXT0AB0Q
Row 20 - Cell 0 Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware DXM04B0Q
Row 21 - Cell 0 Seagate 600 SSD 240 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: B660
Row 22 - Cell 0 OCZ Vector 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: 2.0
Row 23 - Cell 0 Plextor M5 Pro 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s Firmware: 1.02
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Benchmarks
ULINK DriveMaster 2012DM2012 v980, JEDEC 218A-based TRIM Test, Protocol Test Suite
Test Specific HardwareSAS/SATA Power Hub, DevSlp Platform, PCIe SSD Power Adapter
Tom's Hardware Storage Bench v1.0Intel 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 8PCMark 8 2.0.228, Storage Consistency Test