Lexar NM710 1 TB

[W1zzard]

The Lexar NM710 comes at outstanding pricing of just $47 for the 1 TB model. Testing in our review confirms, that this SSD can deliver good performance that is able to compete with other popular midrange SSDs like the Samsung 970 EVO Plus and Crucial P5 Plus.

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[Chaitanya]

Would like to know how these DRAM Cacheless drives bottleneck on systems with 8GB of RAM as many OEM still ship their systems with DRAM Cacheless SSDs and 8GB of RAM.

 

[jsfitz54]

@W1zzard
In the conclusion, at the top, you quote the Price for the 4TB option, not the lead off item of 1TB.

Amazon.com

Not sure which one you intended? Link is for the NM790??

The 1 TB version of the Lexar NM710 is currently available online for $210.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Interesting. Ive been keeping an eye and doing some research on these drives alongside some of the cheaper crucial P3 (and P5) SSDs but I thought the 710 came with QLC chips...

(Possibly was the 610/620 i was looking at with the QLC)

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard
In the conclusion, at the top, you quote the Price for the 4TB option, not the lead off item of 1TB.

Amazon.com

Not sure which one you intended? Link is for the NM790??

The 1 TB version of the Lexar NM710 is currently available online for $210.

Whoops, forgot to update that part. Fixed now

but I thought the 710 came with QLC chips...

It's definitely TLC, which is also confirmed by our sustained write speed test. But yeah, I was curious about that and general performance, which is why I specifically asked Lexar for a sample

Would like to know how these DRAM Cacheless drives bottleneck on systems with 8GB of RAM as many OEM still ship their systems with DRAM Cacheless SSDs and 8GB of RAM.

System memory size plays no role here. DRAM cache is used for the mapping tables of the SSD (Google), not for data transfers

 

[FreedomEclipse]

which is why I specifically asked Lexar for a sample

This is always subject to change though.

I think all the major SSD manufacturers have been caught with their pants down at one point or another sending out SSD samples with TLC to reviewers then switching the chips on them to something more inferior for the final product. Samsung, Crucial, Kingston - They've all done it.

Since you said you asked for a sample, and the 790 review is already published. Im hoping there are a few more Lexar reviews to come!

 

[Luisds]

This is always subject to change though.

I think all the major SSD manufacturers have been caught with their pants down at one point or another sending out SSD samples with TLC to reviewers then switching the chips on them to something more inferior for the final product. Samsung, Crucial, Kingston - They've all done it.

Since you said you asked for a sample, and the 790 review is already published. Im hoping there are a few more Lexar reviews to come!

YMTC with MAP1602A is the best choice now，I recommend Lexar’s NM790 ，it‘s use YMTC 232-Layer 3D TLC ，Has almost the same speed as the 990 pro，The most important is that 1t only costs $64，Only $2 more expensive than NM710

 

[Chrispy_]

Wow, bargain!

2TB for $90 seems great for something that isn't QLC, and can realistically perform above >1GB/s even when the (probably large enough for most people) pSLC cache fills up.

System memory size plays no role here. DRAM cache is used for the mapping tables of the SSD (Google), not for data transfers

I think what he means is "how much system RAM is reserved by HMB, and is it enough to impact systems with only 8GB system RAM?"

I can't answer him definitively, but IIRC drives with a DRAM cache can have up to 1GB of DRAM on the SSD per Terabyte, so there's potential for a 2TB DRAMless SSD to gobble up a quarter of the total system RAM on 8MB systems if that's how HMB works.

 

[W1zzard]

"how much system RAM is reserved by HMB, and is it enough to impact systems with only 8GB system RAM?"

HMB is like 32-64 MB typically, 32 MB for this drive. It's listed in the table on page 1. So it's basically nothing

 

[Chrispy_]

Thanks, I'd missed that. 32MB is nothing at all.

Next question - why do SSDs with DRAM need so much of it if this level of performance can be achieved with just 32MB and access latency is 5x higher than onboard DRAM when having to go all the way out to system RAM and back for mapping tables?

Samsung 990Pro uses 1GB of LPDDR4 per TB, which is 32x more than this SSD's (and presumably most other DRAMless SSDs') mapping tables

 

[oiawshboiwsahnoidaws]

I'm not an expert but i think HMB drives don't keep a mapping table for the whole drive in memory
Also i know maxiotek controllers employ data compression maybe they also compress the mapping table which is probably bad for latency but this is just my conjucture here
Btw is lexar nm790 missing from the charts? wanted to compare them but can't find nm790

 

[Random_User]

Thanks for the detailed review. Seems fine drive. But sadly, Lexar is not available in some countries.

Thus being said, I think Solidigm P44 and Hynix Gold/Platinum is quite a nice choice too. Especially judging by the graphs in the article, P44 is best for gaming. And here they cost way less, than Samsung, and WD. But I don't know much about their reliability.

 

[W1zzard]

I'm not an expert but i think HMB drives don't keep a mapping table for the whole drive in memory
Also i know maxiotek controllers employ data compression maybe they also compress the mapping table which is probably bad for latency but this is just my conjucture here

Exactly my thoughts, too. Basically you know you only have like 32 MB available, so you come up with the best possible algorithms, with a focus on memory efficiency. With physical DRAM you know that you have a lot of it, so you can focus more on performance than memory usage.

Btw is lexar nm790 missing from the charts? wanted to compare them but can't find nm790

Acer Predator GM7 is the same drive as NM790

 

[sLowEnd]

Thanks for the review. I've been seeing this drive around for very low prices, so I was curious how it performed. Seems pretty good for the price.