AMD Radeon R7 SSDs - A slightly familiar product series

We review the AMD Radeon R7 series SSD. Based on an Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller the product comes with the latest iteration of Toshiba NAND flash memory. The end result is an SSD that is very fast and competitive in terms of pricing; combine that with endurance and you will get a very feasible SSD. Yeah it has been topic of gossip and discussion for well over a year now, but AMD is releasing the first SSD series, dubbed the Radeon R7. Next to GPUs, APUs and memory modules AMD will release Radeon branded SSDs in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB. The SSD series is of course 2.5" for desktop and notebooks. Sequential read performance is listed as up-to 550 Mb/s with writes up-to 530 MB/sec depending on the volume size of the SSD that is. The handsomme three offer 4K random access throughput of up to 90,000 IOPS (read). Sounds familiar ? It's because it it. What is rather interesting to take note of is that the SSDs are based on OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 and Toshiba-made A19nm MLC NAND flash chips. So the OEM/ODM for AMD is none other then OCZ Storage Solutions and thus Toshiba. In fact the SSD resembles the OCZ Vector 150 and ARC 100 series more then a little. Fun thing is though that the SSD has been tweaked a bit, making it very fast. AMD also extends warranty to four years with a rated 30GB/day writes. Competitive is the key word for this review as over the past month or two the dynamics are changing fast, players like Samsung and Micron (Crucial) have introduced new SSDs that brings down the market to its knees really. It was only last year that we wrote that SSD prices settled at just under 1 EURO per GB for the end-user, in the beginning of the year prices have been hovering at 70 cents per GB and currently you can already find SSDs priced at 35 Cents (EURO) per Gigabyte of storage volume. So with that in mind nobody can stay behind, hence today you are seeing a new product series from AMD / OCZ Storage solutions.

The Radeon R7 series will look and feel familiar as it uses the cornerstone of features and even the same controller that previous OCZ SSD products have had. A better pricing model combined with impressive performance is key to OCZ. These days we have nice volume SSDs at way more acceptable prices. Very fast performance versus reliability, AMD and OCZ wants to give you the best and made a new combo out of that. The new Radeon R7 series is based on the Barefoot 3 M10 controller and combines it with the latest 19nm MLC-Flash memory from Toshiba, of course.

Models Radeon R7 Series performance

120GB - 550 MB/sec Read - 470 MB/sec Write

240GB - 550 MB/sec Read - 530 MB/sec Write

480GB - 550 MB/sec Read - 530 MB/sec Write

Covered with a three year warranty the street prices ex VAT for these SSDs will be roughly :

75 EURO for the 120GB

123 EURO for the 240GB

195 EURO for the 480GB

The specs are very impressive. The models have sustained read levels of close to 550 MB/sec and up-to 530 MB/sec respectively. And with 4K random write performance estimated at roughly 90K IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) it's launching with the sole mission to impress . Have a peek first, after which we'll dive into the technology behind it and obviously we'll present you a nice phat performance overview.



AMD Radeon R7 SSD with 19nm Toshiba MLC NAND and the Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller