In this review of Crucial's new T500 PCIe 4 SSD, we'll be looking at just how fast this new M.2 SSD is at dishing out data and dealing with real world tasks such as loading games.First, the specifications, though, and this is one of the fastest-claimed PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the planet, with read speeds up to 7,400MB/sec and write speeds up to 7,000MB/sec - easily matching the fastest SSDs out there short of the latest PCIe 5.
As well as read and write speeds of 7,400MB/sec and 7,000MB/sec respectively for the 2TB model reviewed here, the T500 uses TLC NAND memory and has 1GB of LPDDR4 memory for every terabyte of storage space acting as a cache to speed up writing. For the moment, only 500GB, 1TB and 2TB models are available but a 4TB model will apparently be available in 2024 and that's important for a few reasons.
Still, this didn't seem to impact performance in 3DMark's game performance storage test, where it was a match for everything except the Solidigm P44 Pro. The same was true in the game access times, where it even managed to match or better everything except the Crucial T700 Pro and Solidigm P44 Pro, even matching Corsair's MP700 PCIe 5.0 SSD.
Where the Crucial will have the advantage, though, is with the 4TB version of the T500 as the Solidigm tops out at 2TB, as do many PCIe 5.0 SSDs such as Corsair's MP700. As usual, pricing varies in different regions, but for gamers that are looking for high performance 1TB or 2TB M.2 SSDs, the Solidigm P44 Pro is still the speed king.