Teamgroup T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series 1TB SSD Review

To test 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 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.

We use the following folder/file types:

• 100GB data file.
• 60GB iso image.
• 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
• 50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
• 12GB Movie folder – (15 files – 8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
• 10GB Photo folder – (304 files – 171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
• 10GB Audio folder – (1,483 files – 1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
• 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
• BluRay Movie – 42GB.
• 21GB 8K Movie demos – (11 demos)
• 16GB 4K Raw Movie Clips – (9 MP4V files).
• 4.25GB 3D Printer File Folder – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
• 1.5GB AutoCAD File Folder (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).

The drive averaged 415MB/s for the thirteen real-life file transfers when writing to the drive with the fastest being the 60GB iso image and the BluRay movie at 524MB/s, the slowest being the 50GB file folder transfer. Reading the data back averaged 406MB/s, the fastest being the 5GB image at 446MB/s and the slowest, the 50GB file folder once again.

To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSD's we use the same files but transfer to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive.

Swapping over to an all NVMe architecture saw, as you might expect transfer speeds rocket, with ten out of the thirteen write transfers topping well above 2.5GB/s. The faster write transfer was for the 5GB data file at 2,948MB/s, the slowest being the 60GB Steam folder transfer. Reading the data back the drive topped the 2GB/s mark on nine out of the thirteen tests with the 2.5GB/s mark passed five times.

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