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The NV7000-t is the current flagship of Netac's wide range of PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 3 NVMe SSDs. It uses a 4-channel DRAM-less controller paired with 232-Layer 3D TLC NAND. We analyse the 2TB model that retails for just £120 here in the UK.
At the time of writing, the NV7000-t product line as per the company's website comprises three capacities; 512GB, 1TB and the 2TB drive we are reviewing here, but a 4TB drive has been launched very recently. A Maxiotech MAP1602A 4-channel DRAM-less design controller is powering the drive, which looks after YMTC 232-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
Netac quotes Sequential performance figures for the NV7000-t line-up as up to 7,200MB/s and 4,400MB/s for read and writes respectively for the 512GB model. Both the 1TB and 2TB drives get the same up to 7,300MB/s read figure with the 1TB drive rated up to 6,600MB/s for writes while the 2TB drive is a little faster at 6,700MB/s.
Random 4K performance is quoted for the 512GB drive as up to 850,000 IOPS for reads and up to 600,000 IOPS for writes. The 1TB and 2TB drives have the same up to 700,000 IOPS for writes figure. When it comes to random reads the 1TB drive is the fastest model at up to 1,000,000 IOPS with the 2TB drive rated up to 900,000 IOPS.
Endurance wise the 2TB drive is rated at up to 1,280 TBW with the 1TB drive at 640TBW and the 512GB model at 320TBW and Netac back the drive with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: YMTC 232-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Maxiotech MAP1602A, 4-channel.
- Cache: None, uses Host-Memory-Buffer (HMB) technology.
- Interface: PCIe Gen 4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
- Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
- Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.3mm
- Drive Weight: 8g
Firmware Version: H230827a
Netac's NV7000-t comes in a compact box with a good clear image of the drive on the front. To the right of the image is a sticker displaying the drive's capacity. The rear of the drive is mostly covered by multi-lingual notes about the drive interface and what version of NVMe (1.4) it supports.
Netac's NV7000-t 2TB drive is built on a single-sided M.2 2280 format. Netac provides an optional heat shield label containing a thin metal layer with the drive which is a must-have if you are thinking about using the drive without any form of motherboard M.2 cooling.
The drive uses a Maxiotech MAP1602A 4-channel controller, which we hardly ever see, but having said that, it does power the last two Lexar drives we looked at, the NM790 standard and Heatsink versions. For the 2TB NV7000-t Netac has used the controller in combination with four 512GB packages of YMTC 232-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
The 1602A is a DRAM-less design built on a 12nm TSMC process with ARM Cortex-R5 architecture. Unlike many other DRAM-less design's the 1602A uses a 2400 MT/s interface speed for better performance. The controller supports up to 4TB of TLC 3D MLC/TLC/QLC NAND and uses MAXIO Agile ECC 3 Technology for error correction.
Netac's SSD management utility is the SSD ToolBox. Very easy to use and understand it supports most of what you need to do to keep an SSD happy. It also includes a very useful Data Migration tool.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, 32GB DDR5-6000, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and a Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard.
Other drives
Corsair MP600 GS 2TB
Corsair MP600 PRO 2TB
Corsair MP600 PRO XT 2TB
Crucial T500 2TB
Gigabyte AORUS 7000e 2TB
HP FX900 Pro 2TB
Kingston Fury Renegade Heatsink 2TB
Kingston KC3000 2TB
Kioxia Exceria Pro 2TB
Lexar NM790 4TB
Lexar NM790 with Heatsink 4TB
Lexar Professional NM800PRO Heatsink 2TB
MSI Spatium M480 2TB
Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB
Samsung SSD990 PRO 2TB
Solidigm P41 Plus 2TB
Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda 2TB
Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB
WD Black SN850X Heatsink 2TB
WD_Black SN770M 2TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 8.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
IOMeter.
UL Solutions PC Mark 10.
UL Solutions 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using v8.0.
The Netac's NV7000-t read score of 82.78MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8's 4K QD1 test sees it in the top ten of our results chart. However, its write score of 318.80MB/s is the second fastest we've seen in this test for a Gen 4 drive to date.
Looking at the benchmark result screens we can confirm the official Sequential read rating of 7,300MB/s and even better it a little with a test result of 7,437MB/s. However, when it came to Sequential writes our test result score of 6.485MB/s is somewhat short of the official maximum of 6,700MB/s. The controller in the drive seems happier dealing with compressible data when it comes to reading 4K data as can be seen by the 0 fill result screen for QD1 T1 and QD32 T16. On the flip side the 4K QD32 T16 write performance dropped when using compressible data.
The NV7000-t's Sequential read test result of 7,437MB/s puts the drive into sixth place on our results table.
Peak Performance Profile
Netac quotes 4K random performance figures for the NV7000-t of up to 900,000 IOS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPs for writes. When tested with the Peak Performance profile test in CrystalDiskMark8 we could confirm those figures and indeed better them. The best read score we saw was 947,658 IOPS while the best write result, 1,081,518 IOPS soared past the official figure.
As with the default test, we could confirm the official Sequential read performance figure but not the writes. Swapping over to compressible data saw 4K random reads rise to 1,099,592 IOPS while writes went in the opposite direction dropping to 794,072 IOPS, both figures topping the official ones.
Real World Profile
In the Real World profiles test the drives Sequential read result of 5,109MB/s sees it third place in our results chart behind Crucial's T500 and WD's Black SN850X Heatsink drive.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests.
With the ATTO benchmark results the drive fell short of the official 7,300MB/s and 6,700MB/s for reads and writes respectively, with reads at 6,920MB/s and writes at 5,910MB/s.Even so the drive still made it into the top ten on our results chart.
During the ATTO test run, the read performance peaked at the 1MB mark at 6,940MB/s before dropping back to finish the test run at 6,900MB/s. When it comes to writes, the drive's performance starts to plateau to some extent from the 64KB mark.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read-and-write tests, as well as random read-and-write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses incompressible data samples which many drives struggle with, so results can be viewed as the worst-case scenarios.
AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
The Netac NV7000-t's read score of 3402 is good enough to drop the drive into second place on the chart behind Crucial's T500. Its write score of 4387 is more impressive.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
With our 128KB Sequential tests, we could confirm the official read rating of up to 7,300MB/s with a test result of 7,360MB/s. However, we couldn't confirm the maximum write rating of 6,700MB/s with a test result of 6,466MB/s.
128KB Sequential Read v QD compared.
The Netac NV7000-t performs best in relation to drives around it in QDs 2 and 4 where it sits in third place in the result charts. At QD1 it sits in fifth place while at QD32 it slips to outside the top 10.
128KB Sequential Write v QD compared.
At QD1 the drive is the fastest Gen 4 drive we've seen to date for Sequential writes. However, as the QD increases the drive drops down the results tables.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random read performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Officially the Netac NV7000-t is rated as up to 900,000 IOPS for 4K random reads. With our four-threaded tests, we couldn't get close to the official figure with a peak test result of 632,355 IOPS (QD32).
4K Random Read v QD compared.
Although we couldn't get close to the official 4K random read figure, the test results we saw make the Netac NV7000-t the fastest Gen 4 drive we've seen to date at every tested queue depth.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Netac rates the 4K random write performance of the NV7000-t as up to 700,000 IOPS. With our four threaded tests, the best we saw from the drive was 500,000 IOPS (2,051MB/s).
4K Random Write v QD compared.
At QDs 1, 4 and 32 the drive sits in third place in our results charts. At QD2 the drive slips a little to fourth place.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8’s custom settings to test the 4K 70/30 mixed read/write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths using a single thread and four threads.
Using a single thread the 2TB Netac NV7000-t produced results that ranged from 23,042 IOPS (94.38MB/s) at QD1 up to 206,262 IOPS (855.85MB/s) at QD32. Switching to four threads the performance goes from 93,464 IOPS (382.82MB/s) at QD1 up to 430,070 IOPS (1,761.57MB/s) at QD32.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8 where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads.
Random Reads
In the random read QD1-QD8 tests the drive produced smooth increases in performance as the queue depth deepened without any noticeable dramas. At QD1 the drive speed ranges from 20,216 IOPS (82MB/s) using a single thread up to 87,623 IOPS (358MB/s) using four threads. At a QD of 8, the single-thread performance had increased to 161,889 IOPS (663MB/s) while the four-threaded test reached 498,442 IOPS (2,041MB/s).
Random Writes.
In the 4K write tests, the performance rose quickly from QD1 to QD2 for all four tested threads with the fastest rise seen in the three and four-threaded tests. All four threads see the rate of increase in performance start slowing from QD2 onwards up to the end of the test run at QD8. QD1 performance ranges from 71,117 IOPS (315MB/s) using a single thread up to 256,807 IOPS (1,051MB/s) using four threads.
In our read-throughput test, the drive peaked at the 8MB block mark at 6,018.39MB/s, some 1,282MB/s short of the official maximum figure of 7,300MB/s before falling back to 5,997MB/s at the end of the test run.
Even though the peak test result figure of 6,018.39MB/s is well short of the official maximum for the drive, that peak result is good enough to make the 2TB Netac NV7000-t the third fastest Gen4 drive we've tested to date.
In the write throughput tests, the drive peaked at the 8MB block at 5,914,79MB/s, some 786MB/s short of the official maximum of 6,700MB/s before falling away to finish the test run at 5,803.58MB/s.
The test result of 5,914MB/s is only good enough to put the drive in the lower section of the results chart.
The PCMark 10 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. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.
The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.
Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until the main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
The 2TB Netac NV7000-t performed pretty well in PCMark10's Full System Drive Benchmark. It averaged 294MB/s for the six Adobe startup traces, the fastest being 368MB/s for the startup test trace of Premiere Pro. For the Adobe usage traces it averaged 568MB/s for the five tests, with the fastest being the 1,236MB/s for the Adobe Photoshop heavy usage trace.
The drive averaged 858MB/s for the three gaming test traces, the fastest being Battlefield V at 1,111MB/s with Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 the next fastest at 950MB/s and finally Overwatch at 514MB/s. When it came to the file transfers, the fastest was the cp3 Read test at 3,911MB/s with the drive averaging 2,218MB/s for the six file transfer tests.
With an overall bandwidth figure of 573.53MB/s, the 2TB Netac NV7000-t slots into the fourth spot on the results chart behind the two versions of Lexar's NM790 and the T500 from Crucial.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance.
Traces used:
Battlefield V
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Overwatch
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Game Move
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Game Recording
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing Game
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Game Saving
Saving progress in The Outer Worlds game.
In 3DMark’s Storage Test, the NV7000-t had an average game loading bandwidth figure for the three games of 920.87MB/s which is the fourth fastest average for a Gen4 drive with an average access time of 57µs.
In the game moving, recording, installing and saving test traces the drive averaged 948.48MB/s with an average access time of 50µs for the four tests.
The average bandwidth figure for the 2TB Netac NV7000-t for the complete benchmark run was 616.76MB/s.
The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance including scene loading times.
The benchmark gives an overall load time as well as loading times by scene.
Netac's NV7000-t does well enough in the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark considering it's very nearly in last place for the loading Scene 1 test. After that, it doesn't stray outside of the top 5 of the remaining Scene traces and ends up in fifth place on the Total Loading Time chart.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs.
Netac supply an optional heat spreader label with the NV7000-t which you don't need to use if you are using the M.2 heatsink provided by the motherboard you are installing the drive into. If you are planning to use it without motherboard cooling then you should use the spreader label. We relied on the hefty built-in heatsink on our Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme test rig motherboard.
The hottest the drive got was when it was being pushed very hard during the Sequential write test using CrystalDiskMark8, when it peaked at 48° C which is 22° C under the stated maximum operating temperature. For the non-4 K tests the drive averaged 46°C while for the 4K-based tests, the average was 45.5°C.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Kingston KC3000.
Transfer Details
Windows 10 backup – 118GB.
Data file – 100GB.
BluRay Movie – 42GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
Steam folder – 222GB (8 games: Alien Isolation, Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Shadow Of Mordor, Skyrim, The Witcher3 Wild Hunt).
Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The drive averaged 1,896MB/s when writing the 13 transfer tests, with the fastest being 5,286MB/s for the 100GB Data file transfer and the slowest being 185MB/s for the 10GB Photo Folder transfer.
The drive was much more efficient reading back the data with the average for the 13 tests being 4,879MB/s. As before the quickest transfer was the 100GB data file while the slowest was the 50GB File Folder.
Netac may be a new name to some but the company based in Shenzen, China was founded in 1999 and are experts in flash-based storage. The latest addition to their range of PCIe Gen 4 NVMe drives is the NV7000-t.
At the time of writing the product lineup as per the Netac website is made up of three capacities; 512GB, 1TB and 2TB, the drive we are looking at here. However, just recently a flagship 4TB drive has been released but it seems the product page hasn't been updated to include it yet.
At the heart of the NV700-t is a Maxiotech MAP1602A 4-channel controller. A DRAM-less design, the MAP1602A makes use of Host Memory Buffer (HMB) 3.0 technology which uses system memory instead of a dedicated cache chip. The drive also makes use of Dynamic SLC cache writing technology. Another trick up its sleeve is that it uses a fast 2400 MT/s flash interface which helps performance. The drive uses YMTC 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash, and the 2TB version of the NV7000-t uses four 512GB NAND packages.
Netac rates the Sequential performance for the 2TB version of the NV7000-t as up to 7,300MB/s for reads and 6,700MB/s for writes. Testing the drive with the ATTO benchmark we failed to reach those maximum figures, the best figures we saw were 6,920MB/s for reads and 5,910MB/s for writes. Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we could confirm the official read figure with a best default test result of 7,437MB/s. However, the write figure was still short of the maximum figure at 6,485MB/s.
As for 4K random performance, Netac rates the NV7000-t as up to 900,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes. With our four-threaded testing, the best read figure we saw was 632,355 IOPS (QD32) so way short of the official maximum. However, even though the drive was short of the official figure, the drive was the fastest Gen 4 drive we've seen to date through all the featured queue depths – 1, 2, 4 and 32.
The best random write figure we saw from our four thread testing was 500,960 IOPS so again well short of the official figure. Although it's not the fastest Gen 4 drive when it comes to random writes, it maintained third position in the results charts for three out of the four featured queue depths – 1, 4, and 32 and only dropped one place at QD2. Using the default Peak Performance Profile in CrystalDiskMark 8 we could confirm the official random figures and indeed better them, with reads at 947,658 IOPS and writes at 1,081,518 IOPS.
The NV7000-t is supported by Netac's SSD management utility called SSD ToolBox. It might not have the funky GUI of some of its competitors' utilities but does have all the basics to help you maintain the drive including the ability to perform firmware updates, Secure Erase and data migration
We found the 2TB version of Netac's NV7000-t for £119.99 (inc VAT) on Amazon.co.uk HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros
- Very fast drive.
- Endurance.
- Pricing.
Cons
- Write speeds in some benchmark tests.
KitGuru says: Netac's NV7000-t performs very well and is the fastest Gen 4 drive we've seen to date in some of our testing, but as always for a Gen 4 drive it does run pretty hot when pushed hard so make sure it has some form of dedicated motherboard cooling or use the bundled heat spreader label at least. Netac has given it every chance with a pretty competitive price tag.
