We started researching at Teamgroup SSDs last year and were amazed by how fiercely they compete in the SSD market. Their drives provide exceptional performance and consistency at a very reasonable price. Today, we’ll look at the Teamgroup T-Force G70 Pro with 2TB of storage. It is the next step in their premium PCIe Gen4-based solutions, but with some novel technology under the hood. Could the controller upgrade improve performance over last year’s DRAM-less T-Force A440 Pro? Let’s run it through our test machine to find out!
If you haven’t heard of Teamgroup, that’s not surprising; they’re not one of the major names you see spending millions of dollars on continual advertising. That being said, I’m sure they drive those large names nuts as they continue to provide incredible value at a price that the big boys simply cannot match. Our evaluation of the Cardea T-Force A440 Pro demonstrated this, as the drive was able to outperform some of the top drives on the market while costing approximately 25% less than its competitors. Teamgroup has been a manufacturer since 1997, with full vertical integration. This implies they are accountable for their own product design, materials, manufacturing, and quality control. They collaborate with the best in the market for controllers, just like everyone else, but they can ensure that the items they offer are of the highest quality. Let’s go behind the hood to understand why.
Before we delve under the hood of the G70, let’s briefly distinguish between DRAM and DRAM-less, and why the latter is becoming less important. DRAM cache is memory that the manufacturer adds directly to the drive to provide a fast caching location on the chip. This DRAM can be used to store metadata, which serves as a roadmap for where all data on that drive is stored. This means that subsequent accesses (where the map is established) will be faster. DRAM-free SSDs instead store the same map on flash cells, which are slower and wear out faster with repeated use. However, more recent developments may also employ something known as a Host Memory Buffer, or HMB. Instead, HMB stores this index in the computer’s high-speed memory, whereas PCIe lanes provide the same function. In our recent tests, we saw good performance with HMB-enabled drives, but DRAM-enabled drives are proven and true.
The T-Force G70 Pro features two 1GB Micron DDR4-2400 chips (MT40A512M16JY-083E:B D9TBK). It also includes a new Innogrit “IG5236CAA” controller, which doubles the amount of channels over its predecessor, resulting in doubled IOPS and overall performance. The flash is a YMTC 128-layer 3D TLC NAND (YMN09TC1B1JC6C) with a 2280 length and PCIe Gen 4×4, NVMe 1.4. In this example, we’re looking at the 2TB Graphene version, which contains a simple adhesive strip that performed admirably in our earlier tests; however, there is also an aluminum block heatsink variant available for a few dollars more. When we talk about warranties, we’ll bring up pricing.
We strongly believe in using a range of testing instruments to establish overall drive performance. As such, we rely on CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, PassMark, and 3DMark. We also run all of these utilities several times, empty, half-filled, and nearly full, to guarantee consistent behavior. There are numerous beliefs that NVMe SSDs perform differently depending on the quantity of data stored, with the empty and full states being the most disparate. Well, I’m pleased to inform that NVMe drives have improved substantially in recent years. The slowness was caused by overprovisioning, a practice that reputable manufacturers have either discontinued or significantly decreased at this time. To test this, I checked empty, 25%, 50%, and almost full. Rather than simply pasting the same thing four times, let’s just state they’re all within a 1% margin of error. As usual, I conducted each test three times; it’s not an issue here.
One of the first tests I run is CrystalDIskMark, which allows me to see if the drive can reach the theoretical maximums. In this scenario, the G70 claims 7400 MB/s read and 6800 MB/s write. Let’s start with some simulated tests.
As you can see, both empty and full, the drive constantly meets and exceeds the claimed statistics, confirming that it is not over provisioned and that the new controller chip is performing well. My next test is always ATTO, which provides a longitudinal look at the drive’s performance across a wide range of block sizes.
Once the block size reaches 1 MB, we witness surprisingly consistent transfer speeds for both read and write. This is significant since it indicates how the drive will perform when transferring multiple smaller files rather than a single huge one.
Switching to physical copies, I began moving Steam games around. This is a massive collection of files, both tiny and large, that represent the ups and downs you’d experience when shifting files. As you can see, we test at several places across the roughly 1.5 TB copy.
It wasn’t until the copy exceeded 1.2 TB of sustained write that we saw a few wobbles in an otherwise very consistent copy, and even then, they finished the copy quickly.
The previous four TeamGroup drives I’ve tested have been quick enough to run in a PlayStation 5, and the G70 Pro is no exception. It has sufficient read and write speeds for the PS5 to recognize it, format it, and prepare it for secondary storage before adding it to the pool. The PS5’s interface has a maximum speed of between 5,500 and 6,500 MB/s, which the G70 Pro can easily achieve, as we’ve shown. This makes it an excellent option for growing capacity.
When it comes to storage, price-to-performance reigns supreme, and TeamForce has been a significant contender in this market for several years. The G70 Pro’s performance, as well as its price, place it squarely in the mix with the industry’s top brands. It’s a difficult battle to claim the top spot in the PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD market, but the G70 Pro isn’t looking to do so. Instead, it provides a fantastic alternative. My own personal experience has proved that they are also incredibly stable, lasting much beyond the 5-year warranty. A 1TB disk costs $89.99; a 2TB drive costs $136.99; and a 4TB drive costs $272. There are frequent sales that take $20 to $25 off here and there, so timing your buy may save you a few bucks. One thing is certain: these pricing put the TeamGroup T-Force G70 PRO SSD as a competitive option in the mainstream PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD market category. This SSD may not be the fastest on the block, but it delivers adequate PCIE Gen 4.0 NVMe performance.