Well me personally, bearing in mind my SHBG is naturally always at the bottom of the range, 250mg Test E (pharmaceutical so dosed properly) has me at 2000ng/dl 7 days post injection after 6 weeks of 250mg E7D which going by half-lives by week 12 I should have been roughly 2400~ and it made sense how I was responding so well to 250mg a week. This was when trying to dial in TRT, lucky for me my doc started high and then tapered down the dose, rather than starting with some bullshit low dose and adjusting so before anyone jumped in at E7D?? And yes, E7D gave me E2 sides, dropping to E4D helped much more and is much more smoother which was to be expected. Anyway...
I think SHBG is the biggest variable between people. I have read reports of people needing 500mg a week to attain what I can at 250mg a week... so going by your above quote GF, and on top of 250mg getting me 2000ng/dl 6 weeks in, I'd say 500mg would put me at the levels that supposedly need 1000mg to reach. However, again my SHBG is at the bottom of the scale always, someone with a more closer to average SHBG level 500mg should yield around 2500~ng/dl. The way I see it, lower SHBG is a positive because I get more bang for buck from my gear.