Adata Legend 960: PCIe 4.0 SSD with up to 7.4 GB/s presented

Adata Legend 960 is the name of the latest member of the manufacturer’s performance SSD series, which was presented at the current Flash Memory Summit 2022. The M.2 SSD’s flagship is the impressive speed of up to 7,400 MB/s in sequential reading.

Adata Legend 960 in detail

The Adata Legend 960 M.2 SSD positions itself as a top-of-the-line model once again above the manufacturer’s 840 and uses the ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 interface. However, the speed of the recently unveiled Adata XPG PCIe Gen5 SSD of up to 14 GB/s is of course not reached. In the datasheet, the manufacturer promises up to 7,400 MB/s read and 6,800 MB/s sequential write.

Thanks to a slim heat sink, the SSD can also be installed in the PlayStation 5 console, where a maximum of 6,400 MB/s can be retrieved during sequential read. SLC caching and a DRAM cache are of course also included.

The SSD is offered in capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB, whereby the latter model is not yet mentioned in the spec sheet and will only be added at a later date. The Legend 960 apparently only comes in an M.2 2280 form factor and has dimensions of 80 x 22 x 3.13 mm (length x width x height) with the heat sink. Without the heatsink, the height drops to 2.15 mm.

More memory means more speed

As always, higher capacity results in better values here as well, with the 2 TB model offering a higher write speed (6,800 MB/s versus 6,000 MB/s) and more Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) at the same read speed. The lifetime in TBW of 1,560 TB is also significantly higher than the 780 TB for the 1 TB variant.

The manufacturer does not provide any data about the 4 TB model either. A 5-year warranty is promised, as long as the Total Bytes Written are not exceeded beforehand.

A special feature can be found in the controller of the Adata Legend 960, because here the manufacturer relies on the SMI SM2264 from Silicon Motion, whose announcement dates back several years and which has been used in almost no SSD so far. In the meantime, the manufacturer has adjusted the data sheet of the controller and increased the performance values.

Thus, the SM2264 is now on par with the Phison E18 and is theoretically capable of up to 7,500 MB/s read and a maximum of 7,000 MB/s write. Thus, the Adata Legend 960 M.2 SSD does not quite crack both values.

• More from Adata: Adata XPG Atom 50: Modern SSD with low power consumption

Prices and availability

The 1TB and 2TB capacity models are expected to reach retailers soon, with the Adata Legend 960 with 4TB of storage to follow at the end of August 2022. The manufacturer has not yet communicated prices in the announcement.