Team Group MP44Q 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The Team Group MP44Q comes at a highly attractive pricing of $120 for the reviewed 2 TB model. Thanks to the MAP1602 controller, performance is impressive and can match famous drives like the Samsung 980 Pro. Only when the SLC cache is exhausted, this QLC-based SSD will fall behind.

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[Chaitanya]

Did you get Samsung 9100 series in for review? It seems to be available for purchase now.

 

[_roman_]

I really wonder how this drive performs in a case without HMB support from the operating system

First dissapointment - No expectation at all

N/A, but 40 MB HMB

I think real life will be different anyway. I use a very old HDD as a junk drive for downloads. The files are checked anyway with a checksum.

Finally we reached cheap USB Pen drive performances.

This drive is very interesting to see how writing performance impacts certain charts.

I disagree that the SAMSUNG 970 Evo plus 1TB should be less useful than this drive, according to page 18.

Not everything is pure READ performance.

 

[bug]

Price at Time of Review: $120 / $59 per TB

Nice.

 

[W1zzard]

Did you get Samsung 9100 series in for review? It seems to be available for purchase now.

Unfortunately I have no contact window to Samsung and the drive is much too expensive right now to make sense for anyone to purchase

 

[Fluke]

I don't understand why QLC SSDs exist.
Lookie here:
Verbatim Vi7000G 2TB -> TLC? Yes! DRAM? Yes! Speed? North of 6500MB/s -> Price? 115€
TERACLE GEN4 T450 2TB -> TLC? Yes! DRAM? Yes! Speed? North of 6400MB/s -> Price? 118€

QLC is supposed to enable higher-density flash chips that are cheaper.
Where is QLC cheaper than TLC? And where are the 16TB M.2 drives I've been waiting for years now?

Bonus:

Finally we reached cheap USB Pen drive performances.

Here is comparison test for the Teracle T450 done by Michael Barton over at Techtest. HUGE difference:

Spoiler: T450 2TB, fill whole drive test

https://techtest.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Schreibrate-nach-Cache.jpg

 

[EatingDirt]

Would rather buy a TLC that performs slightly lower in general (like the Kioxia Exceria Plus G3) every day of the week than these QLC drives.

Will I ever write over 400GB to a drive at one time? Probably not, but there could be occasions of moving steam folders and/or media folders where I may, and with a TLC drive I never have to worry about an SSD going HDD-like speeds.

 

[Lianna]

mapping stables

At least I know a human wrote this.

In our idle testing, the drive couldn't reach its lower power state in a laptop scenario, which means other drives can give you a bit better battery life, for desktop it doesn't matter.

Not applicable for this drive, at least according to the chart.

For the vast majority of users, like your parents, that focus on Internet browsing, Office productivity and video playback, this will be a total non-issue.

I don't buy this reasoning. For, say, parents, only things that matter is that it works, has enough (low) capacity, and does not spit errors - they need what is cheapest and brand you are familiar with, e.g. for its included migration software. These people are OK with eMMC OS drives. A lot of games are OK with being installed on microSD(XC) card.

People interested in SSD reviews watch for good numbers and for lack of glaring problems. There is a glaring problem with this drive - sustained writes.
Edit: BTW, my parent edits video professionally. His SSD does not have to break records, but sustained writes are crucial.

 

[tz213]

Can someone please check my understanding...

These speeds are sustained until 465 GB have been written, which means the drive will fill 90% of its capacity in SLC mode first. Once the SLC cache is full, write speeds fall off a cliff and reach only 160 MB/s, which is very slow—comparable to a HDD.

Does this metric only apply if someone is trying to write a new 465 GB file? So if a 2 TB drive is 1 TB used, a 400 GB is going to be faster than 160 MB/s, because it is using the 465 GB SLC cache.
Or...
Does the "465 GB" mean that when the drive is > 465 GB of used capacity, that any additional new writes will be 160 MB/s? So if a 2 TB drive is more than 465 GB used, any/all new files will be written at 160 MB/s?

I rarely have files greater than 80 GB. But I do have a drive that uses more than 465 GB of storage space. Seems strange to me to include this test metric, and I'd be very surprised if people are regularly writing files larger than 465 GB.

 

[W1zzard]

At least I know a human wrote this.


Not applicable for this drive, at least according to the chart.


I don't buy this reasoning. For, say, parents, only things that matter is that it works, has enough (low) capacity, and does not spit errors - they need what is cheapest and brand you are familiar with, e.g. for its included migration software. These people are OK with eMMC OS drives. A lot of games are OK with being installed on microSD(XC) card.

People interested in SSD reviews watch for good numbers and for lack of glaring problems. There is a glaring problem with this drive - sustained writes.
Edit: BTW, my parent edits video professionally. His SSD does not have to break records, but sustained writes are crucial.

Fixed both, thanks

There's no way I would let my family use eMMC OS drives, they suffered through long boot times with HDD for SO LONG, and giving them any somewhat decent SSD will make them love you, because the machine boots now "instantly"

If your parents edit videos then they definitely need sustained writes, but that's not the kind of "casual" parents that I meant

Can someone please check my understanding...



Does this metric only apply if someone is trying to write a new 465 GB file? So if a 2 TB drive is 1 TB used, a 400 GB is going to be faster than 160 MB/s, because it is using the 465 GB SLC cache.
Or...
Does the "465 GB" mean that when the drive is > 465 GB of used capacity, that any additional new writes will be 160 MB/s? So if a 2 TB drive is more than 465 GB used, any/all new files will be written at 160 MB/s?

I rarely have files greater than 80 GB. But I do have a drive that uses more than 465 GB of storage space. Seems strange to me to include this test metric, and I'd be very surprised if people are regularly writing files larger than 465 GB.

It means 465 GB of data, no matter how many files, but all written in a very short time, so that the background flush SLC to TLC/QLC has no time to migrate data out of the SLC cache, to free up more space for incoming data.

If you stop writing data at some point, the drive will clear the cache in the background, thus freeing up new capacity in SLC, so you get writes at full speed again.

Does that make sense?

 

[tz213]

If you stop writing data at some point, the drive will clear the cache in the background, thus freeing up new capacity in SLC, so you get writes at full speed again.

Yes, that makes sense. But who, or what scenario or use case, is someone constantly writing 465 GB of data and keeping the cache full?

 

[csendesmark]

Finally we reached cheap USB Pen drive performances.

This should not be a work drive, cheap option to hold the upcoming GTA6, and then just use to load the game

Unfortunately I have no contact window to Samsung and the drive is much too expensive right now to make sense for anyone to purchase

Sad,
But I will not take the excuse on the price,
You been tested many PCIe gen5 SSD-s and those prices are about the same as the Samsung 9100 PRO's price (or even more, for now).

 

[Baba]

9100 PRO just came out and it's double the price of their own 990 PRO. I would totally get 2 990 PROs instead. I think that's their biggest rival. Themselves.

 

[W1zzard]

But I will not take the excuse on the price,

Oh well, I just bought one

 

[aliceif]

QLC is supposed to enable higher-density flash chips that are cheaper.
Where is QLC cheaper than TLC? And where are the 16TB M.2 drives I've been waiting for years now?

Yeah it's almost like there's a $50 / €40 per TB price floor that nobody dares go under, makes you wonder (especially since we only now are starting to get down to that level again, that we were already at in 2023)

 

[Fluke]

I'd be happy with a big QLC DRAM-less SSD to dump all my vidya games on if such a thing
a) existed
b) was actually cheaper

Why would I ever buy a crappy QLC if it costs the same as a TLC drive that has more endurance (TBW), better speed (especially during long writes or at high fill-rate) and an actual cache?
BTW, current price for TeamGroup MP44Q 2TB is 160€ - not exactly "highly attractive pricing"

Spoiler

...more like highly abysmal pricing.

 

[Chrispy_]

Another drive that's fine for light use if the price is right, but the price isn't right. Just buy the superior, faster, more reliable, more consistent TLC drives that are actually selling for less.

Maybe in 6 months if or when this drive is a solid 25% less than the cheapest decent TLC drive it won't be a poor choice.

 

[W1zzard]

BTW, current price for TeamGroup MP44Q 2TB is 160€ - not exactly "highly attractive pricing"

Agreed, no reason to buy it at that price. Looks like it's basically end of life in Europe, only Proshop has it