Appreciate that response. I chose IO Meter due to the large number of comparible results at this post.
I have been suspicious of our results for a few days now as my other negative performance indicators have been attributed to other factors - most specifically an issue with Dell R720/820 BIOS issues with VMWare, when set to have VMWare control the performance/power ratio. For anyone else hitting this - the fix is to get the latest BIOS and set the power to "Maximum Performance"