G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 12, 2014 9:02 AM ESTFinal Words
The Phoenix Blade is a beast in performance. It's in the top two of all the client-level SSDs that we have ever tested and trades blows with Samsung's XP941 PCIe SSD (although I must say here that most of the client drives we have tested are SATA based, so the Phoenix Blade with its PCIe 2.0 x8 interface and four SF-2282 controllers in RAID 0 is obviously at an advantage). However, that doesn't necessarily dictate the drive's performance, especially outside synthetic benchmarks, because as we learned in the RevoDrive 350 review, a PCIe SSD isn't always faster than a good SATA 6Gbps SSD.
Comparing the RevoDrive 350 to the Phoenix Blade is actually very interesting: while the two share the same core (4x SF-2282), the Phoenix Blade is considerably faster in all our benchmarks. It's hard to point at the SBC controller given how little we know and the lack of information available, but most likely the RAID controller and its firmware are to thank for the performance as the SF-2282 controller and firmware are essentially the same for all vendors. I have to say I'm impressed with what G.Skill has been able to put out with its first ever PCIe SSD because OCZ has a long history of building PCIe designs.
| Price Comparison (12/11/2014) | |
| 480/512GB | |
| G.Skill Phoenix Blade | $700 |
| OCZ RevoDrive 350 | $795 |
| Samsung XP941 | $510 |
Better yet, the price is nearly $100 lower than what the RevoDrive 350 sells for, but on the other hand that's still almost $200 more than the 512GB XP941. As a result the XP941 will remain as my recommentation for users that have compatible setups (PCIe M.2 and boot support for the XP941) because I'd say it's slightly better performance wise for typical client workloads and at $200 less there is just no reason to choose the Phoenix Blade over the XP941, except for compatibility.
This is ultimately the niche for the Phoenix Blade. Since XP941 boot support is mostly limited to motherboards with the Z97 chipset, there is a market for users with older motherboards where the XP941 is simply not an option due to the lack of boot support. The Phoenix Blade features legacy drivers that load before the BIOS, so it can be selected as the boot device in practically any motherboard. As such it's currently the best option for people who don't have an Z97 system but want fast 'all-in-one' PCIe SSD storage. (Another option would be a PCIe RAID card with SATA 6Gbps SSDs in RAID 0, but that requires more set up and management.) It comes at a cost, but the users who need/want a drive with such high performance and fall into the non-Z97 niche shouldn't find the price overwhelming.
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Supercell99 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Did we ever found out about the endurance of the XP941? Is it artificially limited? The endurance of the GSKILL blade may actually make it worth an extra $200 if it can really hold up to that can of write endurance. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8006/samsung-ssd-xp9...Dug - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Ahh ok. Thank you for the response. My fault for not understanding the weight attributed to a certain benchmark.olderkid - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Any idea if we're going to see the Samsung SM951 anytime soon? It's all I've been waiting on for a new x99 build.Laststop311 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link
Bro i KNOW! I have been on the lookout for sm951 for a long time. When I saw this drive was going to be native pci-e 3.0 x4 m2 ssd + nvme + available in 1TB capacity I was like OMG this is my new drive I dont care what the price is it's 100% goin into my next build. That was like almost 6 months ago or something and still no word. I'm rly sad I hope it is still going to come out.I am not building till Skylake-E so i still have plenty of time. Even tho I am on gulftown i7-980x which is over 4 years old goin on 5 years it still isn't slow enough to be a bottleneck especially on 4.2Ghz OC. Not even upgrading for the cpu just for features I want like DDR4, PCI-E 4.0, ultra m2 slot, sata express, usb 3.0 that isnt from a third party controller (yes I don't have native usb 3.0 still). I still might buy somethign else other than a pc upgrade. This year I bought a 55" oled LG's 2nd gen 55" oled instead of a pc upgrade ( best decision ever it is eye searingly beautiful).
Laststop311 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link
3000 for 55" oled = WINpersonne - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
I'm disappointed no RAID0 SSD setups were included. That's a cost effective option many people will explore which often has comparable performance. Three 850 Pros for 768GB is still less than this device.HoldDaMayo - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Well said, I was thinking the exact same thing.Kristian Vättö - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
I don't have any sets of two drives, so I couldn't include any RAID 0 results here. I may provide an update later if I get my hands on some, though.personne - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
I've often wondered why these kinds of review sites don't keep databases of results. I realize that the benchmark suites change and you're not a huge operation, but even having recent results to compare openly (using your own front end or even releasing open data) would really up this game and enable your users to participate better. I don't want to sound harsh, but it's 2014, reviewing sites have been around for yearly twenty years and they have changed little in format. Anandtech is easily one of the best, but many sites come down to a few pictures of results and some fairly arbitrary comments (Storage Review is one exception; since the start they've had a database where results can be arbitrarily compared). I hope sooner or later Wikipedia and other collective open benchmarking sites will start elevating comparison and I'd hope to see sites like Anandtech leading the way.Thanks for listening. (=
Kristian Vättö - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Well, we've had the Bench section with all of our benchmark data for as long as I can remember.http://www.anandtech.com/bench