AMD Radeon R7 SSD (240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 28, 2014 6:00 AM EST
In 2011 AMD took the first step in expanding the Radeon brand and partnered with Patriot and VisionTek to provide AMD branded memory. With the launch of the Radeon R7 SSD AMD is continuing this strategy by jumping into the SSD market. Just as they did with memory, AMD is partnering with a third party that handles the development, manufacturing and support of the product, which in the case of the R7 SSD is OCZ.
While the front is covered by AMD branding, the back label is OCZ branded and there is no effort to hide the fact that the drive is made by OCZ. Both companies are very open about the partnership as AMD mentions OCZ as the partner in the first sentence of the R7 SSD press release and OCZ even lists the R7 as one of their products on their website. I am glad that there is no secrecy regarding the origin of the R7 SSD because there is already enough shady things going on in the SSD industry (e.g. Kingston switching the NAND in the SSDNow V300 and PNY using multiple controllers in the Optima).
OCZ is a logical partner for AMD because the company is now owned and financially backed by Toshiba, which also gives OCZ prime access to NAND. Given the always haunting NAND shortage, a partner without direct access to NAND will more likely run into supply issues that may hurt AMD's brand as consequence. Additionally, OCZ's Barefoot 3 platform has been geared towards the higher-end market (gamers, enthusiasts and professionals) from day one and has proven to be a good performer.
As I mentioned in the launch pipeline, AMD is not really bringing anything new to the market. The number one goal with the R7 SSD and expansion of the Radeon brand is to make it easier for novice PC builders to pick parts and at the same time ensure that the parts they purchase are high quality and provide good performance. For someone that has never built a PC, the available selection can be fairly overwhelming, so AMD is trying to make the part selection smoother by providing the CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD. Obviously, the R7 SSD also gives AMD a great opportunity to offer more extensive bundles and with aggressive bundle pricing AMD could boost its CPU sales too.
| AMD Radeon R7 Series SSD Specifications | |||||
| Capacity | 120GB | 240GB | 480GB | ||
| Controller | OCZ Barefoot 3 M00 | ||||
| NAND | Toshiba 64Gbit A19nm MLC | ||||
| Sequential Read | 550MB/s | 550MB/s | 550MB/s | ||
| Sequential Write | 470MB/s | 530MB/s | 530MB/s | ||
| 4KB Random Read | 85K IOPS | 95K IOPS | 100K IOPS | ||
| 4KB Random Write | 90K IOPS | 90K IOPS | 90K IOPS | ||
| Steady-State 4KB Random Write | 12K IOPS | 20K IOPS | 23K IOPS | ||
| Idle Power | 0.6W | 0.6W | 0.6W | ||
| Max Power | 2.7W | 2.7W | 2.7W | ||
| Encryption | AES-256 | ||||
| Endurance | 30GB/day for 4 years | ||||
| Warranty | Four years | ||||
| Pricing | $100 | $160 | $290 | ||
The R7 SSD is based on OCZ's Barefoot 3 M00 controller, which is the faster version running at 397MHz, while the M10 version that is used in the ARC 100 and Vertex 460/450 runs at 352MHz instead. The NAND is the same Toshiba's 64Gbit A19nm MLC as in the ARC 100 and in fact even the part number is an exact match.
What separates the R7 SSD from OCZ's other SSDs is the endurance. While the ARC 100 is rated at 20GB for three years (21.9TB total) and the Vector 150 is at 50GB for five years (91.2TB total), the R7 hits the middle ground by offering 30GB of writes per day for four years (43.8TB total). OCZ did some wear-leveling and garbage collection optimizations to achieve the higher endurance in the R7 but otherwise the R7 should be very similar to OCZ's ARC 100.
Sadly there is still no support for low power states and TCG Opal 2.0 / eDrive. The lack of TCG Opal 2.0 support I can understand since that is not the most important feature for gamers and enthusiasts, but by not having support for low power states (HIPM+DIPM and DevSleep) the Barefoot 3 platform is simply not competitive in the mobile space.
Test Systems
For AnandTech Storage Benches, performance consistency, random and sequential performance, performance vs transfer size and load power consumption we use the following system:
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2500K running at 3.3GHz (Turbo & EIST enabled) |
| Motherboard | AsRock Z68 Pro3 |
| Chipset | Intel Z68 |
| Chipset Drivers | Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel RST 10.2 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600 4 x 8GB (9-9-9-24) |
| Video Card | Palit GeForce GTX 770 JetStream 2GB GDDR5 (1150MHz core clock; 3505MHz GDDR5 effective) |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA GeForce 332.21 WHQL |
| Desktop Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| OS | Windows 7 x64 |
Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsX 32GB DDR3 DRAM kit
For slumber power testing we used a different system:
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4770K running at 3.3GHz (Turbo & EIST enabled, C-states disabled) |
| Motherboard | ASUS Z87 Deluxe (BIOS 1707) |
| Chipset | Intel Z87 |
| Chipset Drivers | Intel 9.4.0.1026 + Intel RST 12.9 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 2x8GB (9-10-9-27 2T) |
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 4600 |
| Graphics Drivers | 15.33.8.64.3345 |
| Desktop Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| OS | Windows 7 x64 |
- Thanks to Intel for the Core i7-4770K CPU
- Thanks to ASUS for the Z87 Deluxe motherboard
- Thanks to Corsair for the Vengeance 16GB DDR3-1866 DRAM kit, RM750 power supply, Hydro H60 CPU cooler and Carbide 330R case
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Death666Angel - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
Agility 1 and Vertex 2 still going strong here!mapesdhs - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
The key is fw updates. The old bugs are fixed. Once done, they're fine.People act like OCZ was the only company to have issues, but even Intel and
Samsung screwed up their SSD line at one point or other (FUD posters choose
to forget Intel's 8MB bricked SSD issue).
Ian.
bronan - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
Agreed on that Death666Angel i got 12 of them all running perfect, ofcourse one day they will die :DBut this far super and still good performance for such OLD ssd ;)
On topic i like the way AMD is going open in everything no faking or hiding facts like the competition, i hope AMD keeps up the good work they are doing. Teaming up with other good brands like Toshiba and such only makes both brands better. A shame they do not have a enterprise version else i would have considered them as well
zero2dash - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
I'm sorry, did you just say Vertex/Agility were reliable? Is it opposite day or something?I owned a 30 GB Vertex. It was great for 10 months. Then it started throwing up chkdsk errors. Sanitary Erasing did nothing but "buy some time". I had it replaced several times under warranty. Then they put out a FW update that turned Vertex's into Vertex Pros (probably in an effort to look less terrible with mud on their faces). I flashed mine, sanitary erased it again, and sold it for peanuts (almost literally) and got a Crucial M4 SSD that has been rock solid for several years now.
As far as I'm concerned, OCZ can close their doors for good. Or don't, I could care less because I'm never purchasing another OCZ product ever again.
Homeles - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
Their Octane/Petrol failure rates were close to 50%.ProfSparkles - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
At my company we go through many SSDs per year and by now we lost every single OCZ SSD (mostly Vertex 3) we bought so far and had to replace it, at first we use the warranty and replaced it with yet another OCZ but when those failed aswell we bought new Samsung SSDs (840 EVO) which was less expensive than driving to customers another time and replacing the failed drives. The Samsungs drives already tripled the OCZ drives lifetime.I personally own a first batch Vertex 2 which still works well but since the rev 2 of the Vertex 2 and Vertex 3 they went so far downhill its just ridiculous.
mapesdhs - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
Blah blah. Fact is, none of that applies to the non-Sandforce models, and I've had no
issues with the pile of V3 MXIs I bought; guess you were just unlucky.
Ian.
dragonsqrrl - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
... I think he's referring to their SSD's.Guspaz - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
Bought a bunch of OCZ RAM. It failed (or at least some sticks did) and they got out of the RAM business so they invalidated the warranty. Convinced a friend to buy a Vertex 2 before they got their bad rep. It failed. He got a replacement. It failed. He got a replacement. It failed. He bought an Intel. It didn't fail.Sorry, but a company with such unreliable products getting bought out by Toshiba (who lied to me and refused to honour their warranty) just makes them even more of a "not with a ten foot pole" in my books.
Sparrowgryphon - Monday, March 7, 2016 - link
I just had this SSD fail last night, it was about 4 months old. put it in a different PC will not show up and even stops the PC from booting.