Benchmarks: Real-World Applications
Despite the significant performance differences seen in the file copy tests between the PCIe and SATA SSDs, that same difference isn't as apparent when measuring game installation time.
The Samsung SM951 was just 2 seconds faster than the SSD 850 Pro while Samsung's flagship SATA SSD beat the G.Skill Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD and Kingston Predator PCIe SSD.
Really, the only SSDs we could classify as being slow here are the Transcend SSD370, TS512GMTS800, OCZ Vector 180 and Kingston HyperX Savage.
Interestingly, despite average file copy performance the Plextor PX-G512M6e dominated our virus scan test taking just 33 seconds. The Samsung SM951 wasn't a great deal slower at 34 seconds, though in every other test we've seen so far the SM951 has crushed the M6e.
The Samsung SSD 850 Pro and SanDisk Extreme Pro also did well here with 36 and 35 seconds, respectively.
The other high performance PCIe SSDs such as the G.Skill Phoenix Blade, Kingston Predator and Intel SSD 750 Series all took around 39-40 seconds.
Using Acronis True Image 2015 we backed up roughly 45GB worth of mixed data from our test system.
The Samsung SM951 took top honors at just 149 seconds while other PCIe SSDs were quite a bit slower. The Intel SSD 750 Series took 164 seconds, the Kingston Predator 167 seconds and the G.Skill Phoenix Blade 170 seconds.
Taking just over 240 seconds was the Plextor PX-G512M6e, SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung SSD 850 Pro.
The majority of the SATA SSDs took between 280-290 seconds while the OCZ Vector 180 pushed out to 305 seconds and the Crucial MX200 and BX100 took around 320 seconds.
For this test we created a zip file using a mix of files from our test system which totaled 38GB. The above chart shows how long it took to extract the archive on each SSD.
Again, the Samsung SM951 is by far the quickest SSD taking just 59 seconds, followed by the Intel SSD 750 Series at 75 seconds. The Kingston Predator and G.Skill Phoenix Blade both finished in just over 90 seconds while the Plextor PX-G512M6e sits between the PCIe and SATA SSDs as it took 143 seconds to complete the test.
The Samsung SSD 850 Pro took 187 seconds, which was comparable to the OCZ Vector 180 and SanDisk Extreme Pro.
Above we have the 7-Zip file extraction test shown in megabytes per second rather than time. Here we see the Samsung SM951 averaged 621MB/s while the Intel SSD 750 Series averaged 523MB/s.
The Kingston Predator and G.Skill Phoenix Blade both reached around 400MB/s while the Plextor PX-G512M6e managed 259MB/s.
The fastest SATA SSDs were limited to just under 200MB/s while the Kingston HyperX Savage was the slowest averaging just 170MB/s.