Crucial's new SSD won't come cheap and cost roughly twice what PCIe Gen 4 drives go for these days. Here's what you need to know
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Crucial to launch world’s fastest Gen 5 SSD
Crucial is preparing to launch its ultra-fast T700 SSD, which is now available to pre-order starting at $209.99 for the 1TB model. The drive is currently the world's fastest Gen 5 SSD, surpassing all of the SSDs on our list of best SSDs with read speeds of nearly 12 GB/s. The drive launches later this month, on May 30.
The lowdown: What you need to know
The prototype T700 we received outperformed every single SSD we've tested so far -- including engineering samples from other companies and the fastest drives Samsung has on the market -- in a plethora of tests including DiskBench, PCMark 10, and 3DMark.
The Phison PS5026-E26 SSD controller brings PCIe 5.0 performance to the masses this year. Our reference design sample pairs it with Micron’s new 232-layer TLC, which improves upon the excellent 176-layer NAND flash utilized in a wide range of products. The result is unprecedented sequential speeds and immense potential IOPS.
The new API provides game and application developers with a new model for IO management, which should lift bandwidth bottlenecks currently affecting the latest storage technologies. In theory, this should unlock available performance that's currently not being tapped. According to Microsoft, DirectStorage means users "can look forward to vastly reduced load times and virtual worlds that are more expansive and detailed than ever."
