AMD Radeon R7 SSD Review (240GB)
Summary: The AMD Radeon R7 SSD is a great start for AMD in the SSD market that provides an SSD unit with quality components, decent write/read speeds that is reasonably priced.
4.6
AMD SSD
Radeon R7
Company: AMD
Product: SSD
Size: 120, 240 (Reviewed) & 480GB
Reviewer: James Wright
AMD who are known for their APU’s and Graphics Cards have just gotten into the SSD market with their latest drive, the R7 SSD. This drive is aimed at PC enthusiasts and midrange gamers that features both OCZ and Toshiba technology with proprietary firmware that boasts an impressive read/write speed of up to 550/530 MB/s. It also boasts 256-bit AES encryption, SMART monitoring and a rated endurance of 30GB a day for 4 years. That’s quite a tough and fast little SSD!
The drive uses an OCZ’s Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller which are used in the Vector 150’s and uses the A19nm Toshiba MLC NAND flash memory with DDR3-1333MHz DRAM cache. Needless to say, it has high quality components inside the SSD. Another highlight of the drive is that it comes with a 4-year warranty which is definitely one of the higher ones in the market at present which definitely gives the end-user some additional piece of mind.
Specifications
- Capacity: 240GB
- Controller: OCZ Barefoot 3 M00
- NAND: Toshiba 64Gbit A19nm MLC
- Sequential Read: 550MB/s
- Sequential Write: 530MB/s
- 4KB Random Read: 95K IOPS
- 4KB Random Write: 90K IOPS
- Steady-State 4KB Random Write: 20K IOPS
- Idle Power: 0.6W
- Max Power: 2.7W
- Encryption: AES-256
Compared to some other SSD’s, the R7 SSD is quite an impressive beast out of the box which features the destinctive AMD logo with the Radeon branding that definitely gives an aura of quality. In terms of size, the SSD is a 2.5″ slim line unit with a SATA power and data connector. Overall, it’s a small and lightweight drive that is ideal for a variety of different PC configurations.
In terms of testing, we tested the R7 SSD with an Intel i7-4770k processor plus 16GB of Corsair DDR3-1600 memory with Windows 7 64-bit as the operating system. The system was a clean installation of Windows with the latest patches/updates from Microsoft. We used CrystalDiskMark, HD Tune Pro and Sandra 2014 to benchmark the drive which did mirror the specifications from AMD.
The results of the R7 definitely gives its mid-range competitors a run for their money, especially with the drive (in our tests anyway) almost pushing 550MB/s write speeds. With that said, there are definitely faster drives currently available, however they do come at a cost. But once again AMD target the PC enthusiast and mid-range gamer well and it will be interesting to see if their future architecture incorporates SSD’s into their powerful gaming algorithm.
Final Thoughts?
In conclusion the AMD Radeon R7 SSD is a great start for AMD in the SSD market that provides an SSD unit with quality components, decent write/read speeds that is reasonably priced. The unit is also quite green friendly with an idle power rate of just 0.6 watts and a maximum power of 2.7. Add in a 4-year warranty and you have everything you need for your PC needs.
Recommended!
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