Performance
The performance has been tested on the AMD Ryzen platform, which contains the Ryzen 5 7600 CPU, ASUS Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi motherboard, G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30 memory kit overclocked to DDR5-6400 CL30 and ASUS Strix RTX3070 graphics card.
As I mentioned, results were also confirmed on the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor with the ASUS Crosshair X670E GENE motherboard. The first setup was working with the OS installed on the GM7 SSD, while the other one with the GM7 SSD as a second drive. Both results are very similar, at the edge of the error margin, which was quite surprising. Because of nearly the same results, we will publish only one set of benchmarks.
All tests were performed in Windows 11 Pro x64 environment with the latest updates. Windows 10 Pro x64 would probably give us better results as Microsoft still hasn’t fixed some performance issues in the latest OS. Either way, the results are great, and you can check them below.
As usual, in my storage reviews, I will start with the ATTO Disk Benchmark. It’s one of the most popular storage benchmarks, and results are easy to compare at home.
The ATTO benchmark results are not much worse than we could see on the GM7000 SSD. The maximum read is up to 6.93GB/s, and the maximum write is 5.40GB/s. Both results are great compared to other best-performing NVMe SSD on the market.
The CrystalDiskMark results are also not far from what we achieved on the GM7000 SSD. The maximum sequential bandwidth is around 7.44GB/s which is a fantastic result for PCIe 4.0 SSD, especially in DRAM-less design.
In random bandwidth and IOPS, it loses about 15% compared to the GM7000. The GM7000 is also one of the fastest options on the market, so we are delighted to see such high results on the GM7 SSD.
UL benchmarks are showing exceptional results. We only wish for a bit higher bandwidth in the Data Drive Benchmark, as the top series, like the GM7000, could reach 800MB/s. This is less important in gaming, where we wouldn’t see a difference, and the GM7 SSD is designed for gaming.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark score is only 100 marks shy of the score we could achieve on the GM7000 SSD. This is actually impressive, considering the HMB and potential delays, which are not really seen in these tests. The average access time shown in the 3DMark is exceptional.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is an older benchmark but still popular, so why not use it?
Results in this benchmark are high, just not as high as declared in the SSD specification. It’s not a problem, as every benchmark uses a different test pattern and test files.
The last test is AIDA64, which is quite demanding. This time we will focus on the read performance as it’s the most important for gaming.
In both tests, so sequential and random read, the GM7 performs well. As long as the sequential test shows very high results, up to 6.46GB/s, the random test indicates that there are faster SSD on the market for more professional work. The GM7000 could achieve over twice as high bandwidth in this benchmark. On the other hand, the GM7 is significantly cheaper and purely designed for gaming, where tasks like large databases rarely happen.
The GM7 surprised us with very high results in all benchmarks that should satisfy even the most demanding users. With the low price tag, this SSD is likely to become very popular.
