Aida64 Write Tests
In this graph we are looking at the Aida64 Disk Benchmark Linear Write testing. For this no volume or partition is created. The performance of the TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan SSD is very good and maxes out very near the SAMSUNG 860 EVO maximum. It hits 454 MB/s maximum write speed here, while the SAMSUNG 860 EVO hits 463 MB/s maximum. The average is 432 MB/s and the minimum is 417 MB/s, so it stays above 400 MB/s at all times. This is way better than the Mushkin Reactor SSD which drops to 221 MB/s over time. The average is also higher than the Mushkin Reactor.
In the screenshot above you can see the TeamGroup SSD is not too wild, and remains consistent over the capacity of the drive on linear write. This consistency is very important.
In the above graph, we are now looking at random write performance across the entire drive. The SAMSUNG 860 EVO is ultimately faster, at 391 MB/s maximum random write, but the TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan is not far behind at 375 MB/s. What is far behind is the Mushkin Reactor at 343 MB/s. The TeamGroup SSD beats that.
What’s even worse on the Mushkin Reactor is the minimum performance, it drops as low as 53 MB/s in random writes. The TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan SSD does a lot better only dropping to 331 MB/s, and the SAMSUNG 860 EVO is also very close here at 338 MB/s minimum. So, in terms of minimum performance, the SAMSUNG 860 EVO and TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan are realistically on par.
In the screenshot, you can see that once again random write speeds on the TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan SSD are consistent. They do not drop to widely low numbers, for being written randomly the write performance is solid and consistent across the drive.
Uhh, not with 50+GB game downloads it’s not. Boot drive / laptop upgrade maybe.
I have a $100 Toshiba 5TB hdd for my game drive / steam library. I look forward to that price for a huge SSD, 5+ years from now. But by the time that happens, the $100 hdd will probably be a 10+TB one.
I agree with Burt though, 500gb is my standard now for a boot drive and maybe 1-2 games. Everything else on dedicated ssd’s or hdd. 250GB is workable but getting too small and for quality brands it seems worth it to just jump to 500gb at $50-65 over a $30-40 250gb.
Very good drive – basically a Crucial MX500 clone. The MX500 often comes with 96L flash now (which is also denser, but has twice the planes). Team’s coding here is clearly from Intel/Micron with the "01T" meaning 1Tb packages (x4 = 512GiB). This is in contrast to the similar L5 Lite 3D and drives like it – SU800, X3, S280, etc – which use inferior flash. Much like the L5 Lite 3D, it has static SLC – ~6GB at this capacity – which makes for uniform performance (can see this in HD Tune); the MX500 has a significantly larger, dynamic cache that is slower outside SLC at this capacity. Warranty is of course lackluster, but if you want a top-tier SATA drive this is among them in terms of performance.
The firmware revision matches typical SM2258 encoding which usually refers to the type of flash it’s using. For example you common see Qx6/7xxA in the cheaper drives using second-tier Samsung TLC, Hynix’s 72L TLC (which isn’t great), inferior BiCS (SanDisk/Kioxia), older Intel/Micron 32L TLC, etc. Older revisions were for the 32L/384Gb IMFT TLC. In any case, R/S is for the newer and better flash products, e.g. B16A/B17A which is 64L Intel/Micron TLC (B17A is double the density but also double the planes, so same interleaving).
My only advice for reviewing is that FIO is a strong option for benchmarking, whether on Linux or Windows, although ultimately you would require Linux for full utility. I’ve posted on Reddit about using FIO and also making a dedicated Linux benchmarking USB drive, I haven’t posted about getting these tools working on Windows – it is possible, I have it working in Visual Studio (direct) or Cygwin (indirect), but it’s fairly limited and a pain to work with in contrast to nvme-cli for example.