At a look
Knowledgeable’s Score
Execs
- Quickest PCIe 4.0 SSD so far
- DRAM facilitates wonderful random efficiency
- Synergy low-level Home windows driver improves random efficiency additional
Cons
- Inconsistent pricing on internet
Our Verdict
Greatest-bar-none PCIe 4.0 efficiency highlights the P44 Professional from Solidigm. It’s additionally the one SSD we’re conscious of with a low-level Home windows driver that additional hastens random operations. It’s additionally priced almost as little as HMB designs (regardless of having DRAM on board), making it a heck of a discount.
Greatest Costs Immediately: Solidigm P44 Professional NVMe SSD
$39.99
$57.60
Soligim’s P44 Professional is the quickest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD general that we’ve examined. It’s additionally particularly adept at random operations, making it an excellent alternative for an working system drive. Random ops are even sooner after you put in Solidigm’s personal Synergy Home windows driver. Sure, Solidigm (née Intel) offers a top-notch NVMe driver. You don’t see that daily.
Additional studying: See our roundup of one of the best SSDs to study competing merchandise.
Solidgm P44 Professional design and options
The Solidgm P44 Professional is the primary NVMe SSD we’ve seen for a few months with DRAM onboard (1MB per gigabyte) for caching. The host reminiscence bus (DRAM-less) designs which have proliferated and dominated our protection have made nice strides performance-wise, however DRAM cache nonetheless makes for faster random efficiency.
The P44 Professional sports activities the frequent 2280 (22mm huge, 80mm lengthy) type issue and is out there in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB flavors. Pricing appears to be in all places. I discovered the small fry for as little as $40, the 1TB for $67, and the 2TB for $110 on Newegg, whereas present pricing on Amazon is barely greater (for 512GB and1TB) to dramatically greater for 2TB. For what it’s value, Solidigm quoted me $40, $60 and $110, respectively, so store rigorously and be affected person — these costs are positive to point out up.
The quoted costs aren’t absolutely the lowest for NVMe SSDs lately, however they’re remarkably low for honest-to-goodness onboard DRAM major cache.
The Solidigm P44 Professional is one of the best factor going performance-wise and price-wise. Easy as.
Solidigm warranties the P44 Professional for 5 years with mitigating TBW (terabytes that could be written) rankings of 500 for the 512GB, 750 for the 1TB, and 1,250 for the 2TB. These aren’t the biggest we’ve seen, however they’re workable and characterize way more knowledge than the typical person will write over the higher a part of a decade.
How does the P44 Professional carry out?
We after all examined the P44 Professional with each the usual Home windows driver and Solidigm’s Synergy driver, then measured the outcomes towards a number of equally priced PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
Whereas not the quickest in each CrystalDiskMark 8 check, the P44 Professional was simply the quickest general of the drives proven. In actual fact, it completed fourth amongst all of the SSDs we’ve examined — behind solely the three PCIe 5.0 SSDs on our charts (Essential T700, Seagate FireCuda 540, and Gigabyte Aorus Gen 5 10,000).
As you may see under, the P44 Professional may be very quick with random operations, and will get even sooner while you set up the Solidigm Home windows driver.
The P44 Professional was additionally very quick at our 48GB transfers, tying the Teamgroup MP44 for quickest time within the group. The Synergy driver could or could not have affected this check — it’s too near name. Observe that even our smaller recordsdata are significantly bigger (32KB to 3MB) than what can be thought-about one of many random operations the Synergy driver excels at.
Whereas nonetheless round 40 seconds slower than the quickest 450GB write we’ve seen (learn our Sabrent Rocket This fall and Essential T700 opinions), the P44 Professional was nonetheless very quick. Observe that the synergy driver appeared to decrease sequential throughput barely in favor or random efficiency. However the lower is tiny, and throughout the margin of error for these assessments.
Observe that the newest TLC NAND has seen a pointy improve in efficiency over earlier generations. When employed as secondary cache (SLC mode), it may be written at effectively over 3GBps, and even in TLC/3-bit mode the pace solely drops to round 1.5GBps. The one time you’ll see extreme drops with the newest NAND is when the controller should do housekeeping to unlock area.
Evaluate that with the drops of previous-gen NAND to 500MBps, and generations earlier than that to 100MBps or much less, and you’ll see why you desire a late-model SSD to your system. This modifies our recommendation on shopping for double the capability you want. That also holds true if you’d like high efficiency on a regular basis, however 1.5GBps is hardly a tragic write charge for an SSD.
Do you have to purchase the Solidigm P44 Professional?
If I had been searching for a PCIe 4.0 SSD as my important storage, the Solidigm P44 Professional is the drive I’d go for. It can save you a buck or two with an HMB design, however the uptick in random efficiency from the P44 Professional’s DRAM cache is effectively value the additional coin in my e book. Bought!
How we check
Inner drive assessments presently make the most of Home windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch assessments make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Professional 2TB which additionally runs the OS.
Every check is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Observe that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements.
Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can fluctuate by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND obtainable for secondary caching. Distributors additionally sometimes swap elements. For those who ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we reportby all means, tell us.
