ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Solid State Drive

Model: ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: ADATA Technology
Provided By: ADATA Technology (USA)

ADATA Technology is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high performance memory modules and data storage solutions. Founded in 2001 with a staff of 20, this Taiwanese company set itself apart from the competition early on thanks to its professionalism, industry know-how and eye-catching product designs. Today, ADATA continues to lead the way through constant innovation and development of products that exceed customer expectations. Backed by technical expertise, state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and premium customer service, ADATA currently offers a variety of products including DRAM modules, USB flash drives, memory cards, solid state drives and portable hard drives.

One of the latest additions to ADATA's line of solid state drives is the XPG GAMMIX S70. Designed with avid gamers, overclockers and PC enthusiasts in mind, this M.2 form factor drive is powered by Innogrit's new Rainier (IG5236) controller and is available with up to 2TB of 3D TLC NAND flash. The GAMMIX S70 also utilizes dynamic SLC caching and a DRAM cache buffer to improve read and write performance as well as Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) code technology, End-To-End (E2E) data protection, a RAID engine and AES 256-bit encryption to ensure data security and integrity. To top it all off, the GAMMIX S70 is equipped with an aluminum CoolArmor heat spreader as well as an ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4 interface to deliver up to 7,400 MB/s read and 6,400 MB/s write speeds.

The XPG GAMMIX S70 is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities. For this review, ADATA sent us the 1TB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 7,400 MB/s sequential read and 5,500 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 350,000 random read and 720,000 random write IOPS.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the XPG GAMMIX S70 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at ADATA's new PCIe 4.0 SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the GAMMIX S70 have what it takes? Can it deliver the value and performance we've come to expect from ADATA? Keep reading as we find out.

The GAMMIX S70 comes in a small red box. Along with a picture of the drive, the front advertises a number of its key features including its 1TB capacity, PCIe 4.0 interface, support for NVMe 1.4, SLC caching and 3D NAND. The back of the box provides a bit more information regarding the GAMMIX S70's features and performance.

Physical Features:

The GAMMIX S70 uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 80 x 25.2 x 15 mm and weighs in at 34g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.

The GAMMIX S70 is equipped with ADATA’s proprietary CoolArmor heat spreader design. This aluminum heat spreader features a terraced structure and hollow chambers underneath for increased surface area and airflow. According go ADATA, this design can reduce temperatures by up to thirty percent.

The CoolArmor heat spreader wraps entirely around the GAMMIX S70 and is attached using a couple of screws. While this ensures a solid fit, it also adds about 3mm to the overall width of the drive. This doesn't sound like much. However, you will want to make sure that the card doesn't hit a PCI slot or any of the other components on your motherboard. Also take note that the heat spreader is quite tall (15mm) and that it may interfere with your video card if your motherboard's M.2 slot is below it.

The GAMMIX S70 is one of the first drives to use Innogrit's Rainier (IG5236) controller. Designed for the high-end client and entry-level datacenter markets, this PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe 1.4 controller has 8 NAND channels that can run at up to 1200MT/s. The GAMMIX S70 also supports MLC, TLC and QLC NAND and features multiple data encryption and protection schemes including AES, ECC and end-to-end data protection.

For the 1TB version of the GAMMIX S70, ADATA has opted to use its own Micron manufactured 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. If you'd remove the heatsink, you'd find two 256GB NAND flash packages on either side of the PCB. The drive also has a single 1GB SK Hynix DDR4 SDRAM memory chip that is used for caching.

Like ADATA's other SSDs, the XPG GAMMIX S70 works with their SSD Toolbox. This free downloadable utility is an easy way for users to obtain information about their drives and change various system settings. Additionally, it can be used to speed up your SSD and even improve the endurance of a drive.

When you run ADATA SSD Toolbox, the main screen displays information about your drives. From here, users can view information like the capacity, used space, temperature, health and lifespan of each drive. By clicking on the tabs, you'll also find information like the model name, firmware version and serial number and connection speed.

The SSD Toolbox offers two different diagnostic scans. The quick diagnostics scan runs a basic test on free space and is usually completed in under two minutes. The full diagnostics scan runs a read test on all used space and a write test on all free space of the selected drive. Needless to say, the full scan takes much longer to complete.

ADATA's SSD Toolbox also includes a number of utilities. Along with the ability to do a secure erase, users can update a drive's firmware, upgrade the software and export a log file containing information about your system and drives.

The System Optimization option gives users the ability to run a TRIM command on a selected SSD. Users also have the ability optimize their OS by enabling features like superfetch, prefetch and automatic defragmentation.

SSD Toolbox can also be used to view information about your system. The utility displays a number of things including the operating system, CPU, amount of usable RAM and the model and BIOS version of your motherboard. There are also links to get help, download a user manual and register your SSD.

The test system used in this review is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 CPU, MSI B550 GAMING PLUS motherboard, 16GB (8GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, Crucial P5 1TB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I used the latest version of Windows 10 Pro.

To test the performance of ADATA's XPG GAMMIX S70 SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, WD_BLACK SN850, Silicon Power US70, ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite, Silicon-Power UD70, Crucial P2, Samsung's 980 PRO, SK hynix Gold P31, Crucial P5, ADATA SWORDFISH, ADATA FALCON, Lexar NM610, Silicon Power P34A60, Patriot P300, Plextor M9PG Plus, Plextor M9PY Plus, ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro, Western Digital WD_BLACK SN750, Samsung 970 EVO Plus, ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro, Crucial P1, ADATA XPG SX8200, Western Digital WD_BLACK NVMe, Samsung 970 EVO, Samsung 970 PRO, Plextor M9Pe, Plextor M8Se, Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Samsung 870 EVO, Samsung 870 QVO, Silicon Power PC60, SK hynix Gold S31, ADATA Ultimate SU750, Samsung 860 QVO, Samsung 860 PRO and Crucial MX500.

As I mentioned earlier, the GAMMIX S70 uses Innogrit's Rainier (IG5236) controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.

CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0:

First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential and random read and write speeds. For this test, we're using the peak and real world profiles.

According to ADATA, the 1TB GAMMIX S70 is capable of reading at 7,400 MB/s and writing at 5,500 MB/s. As you can see, the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.

As you'd expect, the GAMMIX S70 wasn't as fast when tested with the "real world" profile which uses a single thread and a much lower queue depth. Nevertheless, it was still able to read at 3,155 MB/s and write at more than 5,200 MB/s.

HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:

Next, I used HD Tach to test the GAMMIX S70's read, write and burst speeds as well as its random access time and CPU usage.

Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the GAMMIX S70 had average read and write speeds of 2711.0 MB/s and 1400.2 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 3440.2 MB/s. The screenshot also shows that, like most other TLC-based SSDs, the GAMMIX S70 uses some sort of SLC caching. The drive starts writing at about 2,800 MB/s and then drops to about 1,300 MB/s when the write operation exceeds the size of the cache. The GAMMIX S70 is able to maintain this speed for a short time before its write speed drops again, down to 600 MB/s.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 4.01:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the GAMMIX S70's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 512B to 64 MB and the total length set to 256MB.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB

When tested with ATTO, the GAMMIX S70's read speeds topped out at about 6.97 GB/s and its write speeds at 5.45 GB/s.

AS SSD:

AS SSD is a relatively new benchmark designed specifically for solid state drives. The application contains five synthetic tests used to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of a drive.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB

AS SSD also includes a copy benchmark. This test copies an ISO (two large files), program (many small files) and game (small and large files), returning the speed and duration of each.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB

HD Tune Pro 5.75:

Next, I ran a series of tests using HD Tune Pro. This hard disk utility measures a drive's performance by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its access time, burst rate and CPU usage. For this review, I'm also going to use it to benchmark the GAMMIX S70's random read and write speeds, random access times and the number of operations per second.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB - Read Benchmark

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB - Read Benchmark

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB - Write Benchmark

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB - Write Benchmark

The GAMMIX S70 performed relatively well when benchmarked with HD Tune. The drive had average read and write speeds of 5,671.1 MB/s and 2,255.4 MB/s, respectively.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB - Random Access Read

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB - Random Access Read

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 1TB - Random Access Write

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB - Random Access Write

When reading 4KB blocks, the GAMMIX S70 reached 45,558 IOPS and had an average speed of 177.961 MB/s. The drive was even faster when writing, reaching 46,240 IOPS with an average speed of 180.627 MB/s.

Anvil's Storage Utilities:

Anvil's Storage Utilities is another benchmark designed with SSDs in mind. The standard storage benchmark measures a drive's performance by testing its transfer speeds, access times and IOPS.

Iometer:

Lastly, I ran a series of tests using Iometer. This tool can be configured to benchmark a number of things. In this case, I used it to measure the GAMMIX S70's read and write speeds and the number of operations per second. The tests were run using random bytes and a queue depth of 3.

The GAMMIX S70's performance was very similar to what we saw in our other tests. The drive was able to read at 6950.42 MB/s and write at 5526.48 MB/s.

The GAMMIX S70 also performed fairly well when doing random reads and writes. In our tests, the drive was able to read at 339.29 MB/s and write at 651.07 MB/s.

According to ADATA, the 1TB GAMMIX S70 is capable of 350,000 IOPS when reading and 750,000 IOPS when writing 4K blocks. With two threads and a queue depth of three, the drive reached 86,859 random read IOPS and 166,673 random write IOPS.

As with most drives, the GAMMIX S70 performed better with more threads and at higher queue depths. With eight threads and the queue depth set to 32, it reached 395,941 random read IOPS and 443,640 random write IOPS. 

PCMark 8 - Storage Test:

PCMark 8 is a complete benchmark for Windows. It includes five benchmark tests, each designed around a specific scenario. The storage benchmark measures drive performance using real-world traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games.

PCMark 8 also includes a consistency test which measures the performance consistency and degradation tendency of a storage system. The test reports the performance level at the start, the degraded steady-state and the recovered state as well as the number of iterations required to reach the degraded state and the recovered state. For this test, we are focusing on the Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) trace and will look at both the bandwidth and latency of the drive

The GAMMIX S70's performance was hit and miss in this test. While the drive was relatively quick during the degradation and steady phases, its performance never really recovered. As a result, the GAMMIX S70 lagged behind the drives from Western Digital, SK hynix and Crucial during the recovery phases, topping out at 938 MB/s.

PCMark 10 - Full System Drive Benchmark:

PCMark 10's Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. This benchmark produces an overall score as a measure of drive performance. Comparing devices is as simple as comparing scores. The tests also measure and report the bandwidth and average access time performance for the drive.

Thanks to its high bandwidth and low latency, the GAMMIX S70 did quite well in PCMark 10's Full System Drive Benchmark. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough to top the WD_BLACK SN850 or the Plextor M9PG.

TRIM Performance:

While SSD's offer many benefits, there are some downsides to using flash memory. One of the biggest issues people run into is performance degradation. Over time, an SSD will run out of fresh blocks and will have to write over data the file system has marked as deleted. This procedure is very complicated and can slow an SSD's write speeds considerably.

To fix this problem, most manufacturers have added TRIM support to their SSDs. The TRIM command allows an operating system, such as Windows 10, to tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. Using this information, the drive pro-actively erases these blocks and adds them to the free block pool.

To test the GAMMIX S70's TRIM and garbage collection functions, I first put the drive in a "dirty" state. I used Iometer to fill 80% of the drive and then ran a random write test for 30 minutes. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the GAMMIX S70's average read and write speeds dropped to 812.45 MB/s and 300.77 MB/s, respectively.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 - Dirty

To see how well the GAMMIX S70 could recover, I let the computer sit for about 30 minutes and then reran the test. The drive's average write speed climbed up to 4432.76 MB/s. However, its read speed lagged behind, averaging out at only 2656.18 MB/s.

ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 - After TRIM

Lastly, I used Parted Magic to perform a secure erase on the GAMMIX S70. With the drive wiped clean, it had average read and write speeds of 5454.28 MB/s and 5214.96 MB/s, respectively.

 
ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70- Secure Erased

Heatsink Performance:

While faster than their SATA-based SSDs, PCIe drives like the GAMMIX S70 tend to generate more heat. In fact, if your computer doesn't have enough airflow or a large video card covering your M.2 slots, they can get quite hot. To prevent themselves from overheating, most SSDs have implemented a mechanism called thermal throttling which automatically reduces a drive's performance when it reaches a certain temperature.

If you're someone looking to get the most out of your SSD, this is something that you don't want to happen. So companies like ADATA have begun to include an optional, stick-on heatsink with many of their PCIe SSDs. In the case of the GAMMIX S70, its CoolArmor heat spreader comes pre-installed.

It's easy to see why ADATA opted to go with a heat spreader on the GAMMIX S70. At idle, the drive's temperature measured 60 ºC which is a good 25 degrees higher than other PCIe 4.0 drives like the Samsung 980 PRO. Under heavy loads, the GAMMIX S70 reached temperatures as high as 70 ºC when reading and 74 ºC when writing. Thankfully, these temperatures had no impact on the drive's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the GAMMIX S70 did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.

Final Thoughts:

ADATA has really knocked one out of the park with its new XPG GAMMIX S70 SSD. This M.2 form factor SSD is powered by Innogrit's new Rainier (IG5236) controller and is available with up to 2TB of 3D TLC NAND flash. Combine this with an ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4 interface and you have drive that is capable of delivering the performance and features that gamers, overclockers and enthusiasts are looking for. The 1TB version of the GAMMIX S70 flew through our sequential transfer rate tests, reading at speeds as high as 7,489 MB/s and writing at more than 5,800 MB/s. It also did fairly well in our random write tests, producing nearly 166,000 IOPS at low queue depths.

Of course, fast read and write speeds aren't the only things the GAMMIX S70 has to offer. In addition to its CoolArmor heat spreader, the drive uses dynamic SLC caching and a DRAM cache buffer to improve read and write performance. The GAMMIX S70 also employs LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) error correction, End-To-End (E2E) data protection and a RAID engine to ensure data integrity as well as AES 256-bit encryption for data security. To top it all off, the drive works with ADATA's SSD Toolbox software and is backed by a 5 year warranty.

The XPG GAMMIX S70 is available now in 1TB and 2TB capacities and can be purchased through retailers like Amazon and Newegg for $200 and $400, respectively.

Highs:

• Available in 1TB and 2TB capacities
• PCIe 4.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
• Innogrit Rainier (IG5236) controller
• Equipped with 3D TLC NAND
• Excellent sequential read and write speeds
• Good random read and write performance
• Small M.2 2280 form factor
• Dynamic SLC caching and DRAM cache buffer
• Advanced LDPC ECC technology
• End-to-End (E2E) data protection and RAID engine
• Aluminum CoolArmor heat spreader
• AES 256-bit encryption
• Works with ADATA's SSD Toolbox software
• Reasonably priced
• 5 year warranty

Lows:

• Heatsink can cause clearance issues with some motherboards
• Runs hot at idle
• Write speed drops when SLC cache is full