Earlier, I introduced the T700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD and commented on the samples first. At that time, the performance adjustment and functionality were not fully in place, so Crucial also prepared the official version of the product after it went on sale, providing an opportunity to fully experience the strength of the T700.
Like DDR5 Pro and DDR Pro series memory modules, Crucial entrusts the agent Jieyuan to supply test samples nearby, so it is no longer as usual that it has been on sale for a while before receiving samples directly from foreign factories. The price information of the T700 in Taiwan is as follows. It is recommended to choose the bare board or the default version equipped with a heat sink depending on the design scale of the motherboard M.2 heat sink.
Crucial T700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD Price Information
Heat sink version:
CT1000T700SSD5 1TB agent suggested price is 7,999 yuan, market reference price is 7,500 yuan
CT2000T700SSD5 2TB agent suggested price is 14,499 yuan, market reference price is 13,799 yuan
CT4000T700SSD5 4TB agent suggested price is 24,199 yuan, market reference price is 22,999 yuanVersion without heatsink:
CT1000T700SSD3 1TB agent suggested price is 6,888 yuan, market reference price is 6,499 yuan
CT2000T700SSD3 2TB agent suggested price is 12,599 yuan, market reference price is 11,999 yuan
CT4000T700SSD3 4TB agent suggested price is 20,999 yuan, market reference price is 19,999 yuan
Crucial probably changed the packaging design of the product outer box this year. If you are purchasing in a large open store, don’t think about looking for the dark blue packaging box in the past. The content is as simple as usual, except for the product body, there is only a simple installation guide, additional tools and special drivers, etc., you have to go to Crucial official website to download and use.
Crucial T700 Heatsink Version
Crucial T700 without heatsink
T700 Additional functionality
The previous early review sample Crucial came with a statement stating that 4K random write, TCG Opal v2.01 function, format time, PS3 and PS4 state power consumption, etc., are not optimized or not yet enabled. This article will go straight to the point and introduce the places where actual measurements can be compared or differences can be seen. As for product appearance, heat sink design, basic performance, etc., the parts that have already been finalized will not be repeated.
Further reading:Aiming at 12GB/s speed, Crucial T700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD early review sample hands-on play
First of all, let’s briefly talk about the tool software Crucial Storage Executive. The interface design and functionality have not changed. It should be noted that some of the functions must use its own exclusive NVMe driver. This is compared with the native built-in version of Windows. Past experience shows that the performance is high and low. Those who are interested can try it by themselves. In addition, Acronis True Image for Crucial can also be downloaded from the official website, which is convenient for system transfer and backup.
Crucial mentioned TCG Opal v2.01. The Phison model PS5026-E26 controller used by T700 itself supports encryption algorithms such as AES 256, SHA 512, RSA 4096, and TCG Opal. The only application that ordinary people are likely to come into contact with is Windows BitLocker eDrive. However, the T700 does not seem to cover the IEEE 1667 standard, so the hardware encryption mode cannot be used, at least the current firmware version does not support it.
As for the state power consumption of PS3 and PS4, Crucial mentioned earlier that the pre-review sample setting is about 150mW, and the final design target is about 85~95mW respectively. The peculiarity of the T700 is the formatting time. Even the official version often takes more than 30 seconds (2TB capacity version), which makes people wonder what is going on behind the scenes at the same time?
As for the temperature part, some media once conducted a stress test on the pre-reviewed sample version without a heat sink, pointing out that once the T700 overheats, the writing speed will be slower than that of the hard disk. In my impression, the temperature of the case exceeded 86°C and the overheating protection mechanism was indeed triggered. . Although Crucial didn’t seem to say anything, during Computex 2023 we chatted with Phison about two or three things, and confirmed that they will adjust the overheat protection point to deal with it.
Phison believes that the temperature will not affect the stability of the operation, nor will it cause the disc to drop and the like. Crucial took advantage of the trend to relax the upper limit of the temperature tolerance of the official version of the T700. The result was changed to a warning of 87°C and a critical point of 89°C, both of which were 4°C higher than the pre-reviewed samples. However, even the current mainstream PCIe 4.0 NVMe performance products are not necessarily vegetarian, so I suggest you not to underestimate the heat.
T700 performance measurement experience
Then enter the stage of performance measurement experience and comparison. Crucial also provides a 2TB capacity version as a sample. The first released firmware of the T700 official version is PACR5101, while the previous pre-review sample is PAZR9019. Some archived data will also be added below, and the potential impact of differences in the software and hardware environments used at that time should not be mentioned further.
testing platform
First of all, let’s take a look at the dynamic SLC Cache setting strategy. From the AIDA64 write test results, it is similar, and the acceleration capacity is sufficient for most scenarios. It’s just that Crucial has probably made some adjustments, so the SLC Cache acceleration creates 3 peaks, and the 2 dips in the middle take longer to regroup, and even the speed fluctuations in the latter part of the 3rd wave are relatively large.
Basic performance As far as the data is concerned, the early review sample (labeled as T700 2TB*) seems to perform slightly better, but most of the differences are less than 1%, which we think is normal testing error. The focus is on random access. Even in the ATTO Disk Benchmark, it can be observed that the 4K throughput increases by 2.6-15.3%. However, Anvil’s Storage Utilities may need to be strengthened instead of increasing.
Advanced test verification First look at PCMark 10, the system disk mode can be regarded as almost unchanged, and the performance differences of various software modules are mostly within 1%. On the contrary, the 3DMark storage test results have improved a lot. The total score of 5,942 points has increased by about 37.1%, and the bandwidth has increased by 40.8% to 1,010.24MB/s. As for the game loading bandwidth, the increase ranges from 7.1 to 57.4%.
The T700 official version scored 4,452 points in the PCMark performance consistency test and 1,020.86MB/s bandwidth. This score is often two or three times that of others. It is so good that people wonder whether the eyes are blurred, or there is something wrong with the test platform. Crucial made adjustments to the T700 firmware, so that the performance of each stage of deceleration, stability, and recovery can crush the pre-reviewed samples and competing products. This benchmark is not easy to surpass.
Crucial also mentioned in the pre-emptive review guide that the T700 uses Phison I/O+ technology to optimize Microsoft DirectStorage performance, which means that the stability of long-term read performance is helpful for large queue/execution thread conditions such as 32KB . Since the application of DirectStorage has just started, we simply take two test modes as examples to see how the T700 generally performs.
In the test and evaluation tool BulkLoadDemo, the official version of T700 has a bandwidth performance of 15.52GB/s, which is very limited compared to the highest 15.22GB/s pre-reviewed samples. In addition, Iometer test Q32T2 and Q64T4 conditions for continuous reading, although the speed has decreased over time, but the difference between the official version of the pre-reviewed sample is almost negligible, which means that Crucial has been prepared earlier.
All in all, there are still not many PCIe 5.0 NVMe solid-state drives that are currently available. Looking at the two conditions of sequential and 4K random throughput, Crucial T700 is undoubtedly the best among the products that have been sold. However, this performance king is not easy to be. Phison’s latest tuning solution has a sequential access speed of 14,000MB/s for reading and 12,000MB/s for writing or above, and is expected to be shipped in large quantities in the third quarter of this year.
It is also based on the PS5026-E26 controller, which is tuned with Micron’s 232-layer TLC 3D NAND. It is essentially the same as the T700. It depends on how Crucial will optimize it later. The biggest niche of the T700 lies in its excellent performance consistency, which shows that Crucial itself has considerable skills in firmware tuning, and based on past experience, the title of performance king will not be too short-lived.
Crucial also advertises that the T700 is optimized for DirectStorage applications, has basic data power-off protection, and provides utility software, its own driver, disk backup/migration software, etc. Taking the selling price into consideration, the T700 maintains a certain cost-effective tradition. Since it should not be easy to find a better choice in a short period of time, Crucial may be able to return to the glory of the SATA generation by relying on it.