ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade SSD Review: Super-Fast NVMe Storage
HDTune v5.75 Benchmarks
The ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade offered strong transfer speeds and competitive latency here, though burst rates landed near the middle of the pack.
CrystalDiskMark x64 Benchmarks
CrystalDiskMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests both sequential and random small and mid-sized file transfers using incompressible data. It provides a quick look at best and worst case scenarios with regard to SSD performance, best case being larger sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.
The ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade offered competitive performance across the board in the various CrystalDiskMark tests. The Phison-based drives offered somewhat better writes overall, but the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade was particularly strong in many of the read tests. The drive offered the best sequential read speed of the bunch, and second best random 4K Q1T1 reads as well.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Game Level Load Times
We also tested game level load times using the Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker benchmark. This tool loads an array of different game levels during its graphics benchmark and outputs the average result when complete.
The ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade put up one of the best scores here as well, bested -- somewhat surprisingly -- by the Atom 50.
Futuremark's PCMark 10 Storage Test
We like PCMark 10's new quick storage benchmark module for its real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark offers a trace-based measurement of system response times and bandwidth under various scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system use cases.
In the trace-based PCMark tests, the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade led the pack with the lowest latency, highest transfer speed, and best overall result.
Our Verdict: ADATA XPG S70 Blade SSD
The ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade is an excellent NVMe M.2 SSD that competes well with some of the fastest drives currently on the market. The ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade offers some of the best sequential reads and writes of any PCIe Gen 4 SSD currently available, with similarly chart-topping random 4K reads and game level load times. The drive also led the pack in the trace-based mixed-workload PCMark tests.
Despite its strong performance in a variety of tests, the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade is also among the more affordable, enthusiast-class PCIe Gen 4x4 SSDs. The 2TB drive we tested can currently be found for only $249, which works out to about $0.12 - 0.13 per gigabyte. There are a handful of lower-priced Gen 4 SSDs available, but not that offer the kind of top-end performance of the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade. The only read downside to the drive is that it can run somewhat warm relative to some other top-end M.2 SSDs, so it's probably best suited to an enthusiast desktop system or PS5 where there is good airflow, versus an ultrabook where airflow is often reserved for the CPU and GPU. Considering the all around strong performance and highly competitive pricing, however, we can easily recommend the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade. If you're building a new rig or upgrading your SSD, the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade should be on your short list.
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