Storage innovation has been at the forefront of PC and gaming console technology in recent years. With the introduction of fast storage technology like DirectStorage and an improved storage stack in Windows 11, PC is finally able to take full advantage modern storage devices.
Leading the charge has been Phison, who was the first to bring PCIe Gen4 to the consumer market, and is the first to bring PCIe Gen5 to consumers as well. Today, we will take a look at the Phison PS5026-E26 Gen5 engineering sample.
Specs
The Phison E26 is an 8-channel NVMe 2.0 controller which is based on the X1 architecture. The X1 is Phison's enterprise SSD - the fastest enterprise SSD on the planet. The E26 also uses Phison's special sauce - the Phison IO+ Technology firmware, which is designed to ensure sustained high bandwidth for hours on end by eliminating block level read disturb. All Phison based consumer Gen5 SSDs will launch with IO+ Technology.
The E26 uses Micron's 232-layer NAND, albeit at only 1600 MT/s. SSDs with the faster 2000 MT/s and 2400 MT/s are coming as well, which will be better equipped to take full advantage of the theoretical max Gen5 bandwidth. Nevertheless, Micron's B58R features the industry's highest areal density and is able to deliver higher capacity and more energy efficiency than previous generations of Micron NAND.
Cooling Solution
The drive comes with a reference design heatsink with active cooling. Light usage and normal day-to-day tasks will not stress the drive enough to push thermal limits or result in thermal throttling, even without the heatsink. However, demanding workloads with high sustained bandwidth will require active cooling to avoid thermal throttling.
Test System
➤ ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-F
➤ RTX 3080 Ti
➤ Ryzen 7 7700X
➤ 32 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 with AMD EXPO
➤ Seasonic Focus GX-1000
➤ Phanteks Eclipse P500A DRGB
➤ Windows 11 22H2
Before we get to the benchmarks, it's important to note that performance in 4kB random I/O operations are greatly affected by the motherboard you are using. Based on other reviews, higher end motherboards can see 4k random reads of over 100 MB/s. On the ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-F, the Phison E26 still performs better than other SSDs we tested, but higher end boards can yield better results in the aforementioned workload. Sequential performance, along with random performance at higher block sizes, do not seem to be as sensitive to differences in hardware.
With that in mind, let's get to the benchmarks.
CrystalDiskMark
The Gen5 sequential bandwidth is blazing fast, topping 10 GB/s! Once these drives start utilizing the faster 2000 MT/s and 2400 MT/s NAND, we should see them approaching the 14 GB/s mark.
As previously mentioned, the 4k random performance is limited by the motherboard. Based on testes from other publications, high end Intel boards can generate over 100 MB/s, with high end AMD boards coming in at around the mid 90s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO Disk benchmark tests sequential reads and writes at various block sizes. The Phison E26 really flexes its muscles here.
AS SSD
The AS-SSD benchmark uses incompressible data when testing performance. As such, this has traditionally been one of the toughest benchmarks for SSDs. Additionally, there is an extra benchmark available which tests performance when copying a mix of files, such as ISO, program files, and games.
Anvil's Storage Utilities
Anvil's Storage Utilities offers a comprehensive benchmark that not only tests read and write performance, but also IOPS and disk response time. It calculates an overall score that we can easily use to compare to other SSDs. As you can see, the Phison E26 is the clear leader here over the Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850X - two of the top Gen4 drives currently available.
PCMark 10
PCMark 10 Storage benchmarks test storage performance in real world tasks. The full system drive benchmark tests more demanding tasks such as copying large files, heavy Photoshop use, and so on, while the quick system drive benchmark tests less demanding real world tasks.
Once again, the E26 comes out on top.
3DMark Storage
The 3DMark Storage benchmark tests storage performance in gaming related activities. Specifically, it measures performance when loading Battlefield V from launch to menu, loading Black Ops 4 from launch to menu, loading Overwatch from launch to menu, recording 1080p60 video with OBS while playing Overwatch, installing The Outer Worlds from Epic Games Launcher, saving progress in The Outer Worlds, and copying the Steam folder for CS:GO from an external SSD to the system drive.
DiskBench
DiskBench measures performance when copying and reading a large file. Unsurprisingly, the Phison E26 has a massive lead over the Gen4 drives tested.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Benchmark
The Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker benchmark measures the load times of 5 separate scenes and then sums them up to reach a total time. This is preferable to using a stopwatch to measure load times in other games, as it provides a more accurate result. Although the Phison E26 is optimized for next-gen gaming workloads, it does not sacrifice performance in older games. It records an incredibly low total load time, with no scene taking longer than 2.4 seconds.
Expanse Demo - DirectStorage
Expanse is an asynchronous texture streaming demo developed by Intel as a proxy for future, demanding asset-streaming games. It supports DirectStorage 1.1, and it stresses the drive by hammering it with constant DirectStorage read requests. As you can see, the Phison E26 is the top performer, boasting the highest peak bandwidth prior to GPU decompression. Thanks to the Phison IO+ Technology firmware, the E26 not only has a high bandwidth in this DirectStorage workload, but it is able to sustain that bandwidth for hours on end. It's no surprise that the top two drives in this demo both utilize Phison IO+ Technology firmware. For those unfamiliar with Microsoft's recommendations for DirectStorage, they recommend that developers design their games to read in blocks of at least 32kB, but preferably 64kB, and to use a high queue depth in order to fully saturate NVMe drives. That is exactly the workload that Phison has optimized for with the IO+ Technology firmware.
Conclusion
The arrival of PCIe Gen5 SSDs is exciting. The best consumer SSDs have historically been based on enterprise drives. Phison's E26 uses the same architecture as the company's X1 enterprise SSD, along with a dual CPU with a built-in ARM Cortex-R5, and a sizable DRAM cache, which essentially brings enterprise level storage performance to the market. Based on our thorough testing and results, Gen5 can offer tangible improvements in real world tasks. However, this is only a taste of what is to come. Faster NAND will give us even greater performance that will be able to take full advantage of the PCIe Gen5 interface. Along with Phison's forward thinking and innovation, next-gen workloads like DirectStorage gaming should see tremendous gains from this upcoming generation of SSDs.
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