TeamGroup T-Force Cardea Gen 5 SSD Blows The Bandwidth Doors Wide Open With 13GB/s Reads
TeamGroup is putting the finishing touches on a screaming-fast solid state drive (SSD) that leverages the PCI Express 5.0 bus to deliver incredibly high bandwidth metrics. While not out yet, TeamGroup says its upcoming T-Force Cardea Gen 5 SSD will be the highest performing PCIe 5 drive when it does actually arrive to market.
It's a bold claim with other drive makers readying PCIe 5.0 models of their own. However, it should at least be one of the fastest SSDs, if not at the top of its class. According to TeamGroup, the upcoming Cardea Gen 5 series will deliver sequential read speeds north of 13,000MB/s and sequential write speeds exceeding 12,000MB/s.
"The T-Force PCIe Gen 5 SSD will support the latest NVMe 2.0 and will be enhanced using proprietary technology to improve durability and product lifespan. The new hardware and support will enable its Gen 5 SSDs to fully meet the needs of the gaming computing market, video streaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and other next-gen digital domains," TeamGroup says.
Naturally you will need a system that supports the PCIe 5.0 bus to take full advantage of next-generation SSDs. As of right now, that means an Intel Alder Lake setup on the desktop, though AMD will join the fun when Zen 4 launches later this year.
In PCIe 4.0 land, the NVMe x4 interface technically supports speeds of up to around 8,000MB/s without factoring in overhead. Driver makers have pretty much squeezed the most out of the specification at this point, with the fastest models getting pretty close to the edge—for example, the XPG Gammix S70 Blade we reviewed is rated to hit read speeds of up to 7,400MB/s.
TeamGroup says it will begin mass producing its next-gen Cardea SSDs in the third quarter of this year, and will also launch various other Gen 5 solutions. Our hunch is that the performance model(s) will leverage Phison's E26 controller. The time frame certainly matches up. Chris Ramsayer, senior manager of technical marketing at Phison, recently joined our 2.5 Geeks podcast where he told us to expect drive announcements around the Computex time frame.
