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AMD Prepares To Ship Gaming SSDs

Posted by samzenpus on from the time-for-an-upgrade dept.

Lucas123 writes An AMD website in China has leaked information about the upcoming release of a line of SSDs aimed at gamers and professionals that will offer top sequential read/write speeds of 550MB/s and 530MB/s, respectively. AMD confirmed the upcoming news, but no pricing was available yet. The SSDs will come in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities and will use Toshiba's 19-nanometer flash lithography technology. According to IHS, AMD is likely entering the gaming SSD market because desktop SSD shipments are expected to experience a 39% CAGR between now and 2018.

110 comments

  1. First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    From my laptop with an SSD.

    1. Re:First Post by ruir · · Score: -1, Troll

      4th post from my MacBook Pro with an SSD ;)

    2. Re:First Post by Thanshin · · Score: 0

      Indeed.

      99% of games have absolutely no performance issues on a Mac. They also take waaaay less space in a Mac's SSD. And they are also way cheaper.

    3. Re:First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4th post from my MacBook Pro with an SSD ;)

      Mod down for using an apple product!

    4. Re:First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Indeed.

      99% of games have absolutely no performance issues on a Mac. They also take waaaay less space in a Mac's SSD. And they are also way cheaper.

      Did it also cause your penis to grow 8 inches overnight?

    5. Re:First Post by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Do you know why it's cheaper to play games on Mac? Because there's only a tiny fraction of computer games available for it.

      Posted from my Mac mini.

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    6. Re:First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, because apple uses all the highest end GPUs to power that retina display, huh?

    7. Re: First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Took the words right out of my mouth.
      *Not posted from anykind of apple product*

  2. details by Billly+Gates · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It is the slowest and built utilizing last generation tech with a noisy fan, but has mediocre graphics acceleration and 250 meg suites of drivers that can break between releases

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't wait until nVidia launches its range of artificially crippled SSDs that die after one year of normal use.

    2. Re:details by Mashiki · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Don't worry. You can always go with nvidia, and get instant overheating because of a fan driver bug. Massive TDR problems(it only exists to this day), because they lowered the voltage via drivers in order to stop the gpu from overheating, and get 280mb driver suites as well, which of course can break between releases and cause commonly used applications to enter into crash city.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:details by ameen.ross · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Wait, what?

      I didn't RTFA, but judging from the title, wasn't this about SSDs and not about GPUs? Or do SSDs also have active cooling and large drivers now?

      --
      $(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
    4. Re:details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's all to do with the CAGR. In the face of a 39% CQGR AMD are facing a 62.3% CHRP next year, so need to offset that by developing a product line with at least a 22.5% QRPD.

    5. Re:details by Mashiki · · Score: 0

      It is about SSD's, however the parent was playing fanboyism and the mods have their heads up their ass like usual and couldn't figure it out.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    6. Re:details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You really need 100% STFU.

  3. Gaming SSD ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So what are the trade offs?
    Why shouldn't I buy this for my regular desktop?

    1. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You game will load 0.2 seconds faster than a standard SSD but you'll pay $150 more for it. Enjoy.

    2. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but does it have gold plated sata connectors for extra low latency as I've seen advertised for some gaming keyboard cables?

    3. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Throwing away the 12ms average seek time of an HDD is the main attraction for getting an SSD. Almost all users would be happy even with an older 100MB/s SSD, provided that it had enough capacity.

    4. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? >40 seconds is way too long to wait to move a single layer DVD disc image... even a cd taking 7 seconds is way too long!

    5. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      If games actually load that much data at once, I obviously have to cancel my comment.

    6. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Perhaps it's not as much about needing to load a lot of data overall, but SSDs might allow you to delay loading parts of the contents until it is needed, because you can be sure that the worst-case (or even just 99th percentile) latency is much lower.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      You game will load 0.2 seconds faster than a standard SSD but you'll pay $150 more for it. Enjoy.

      If the games I've bought recently are anything to go by, it won't load any faster, because it's already loaded all the useful stuff from disk by the time you get to the end of the unskippable videos advertising AMD GPUs and the Unreal engine.

    8. Re:Gaming SSD ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You game will load 0.2 seconds faster than a standard SSD but you'll pay $150 more for it. Enjoy.

      If the games I've bought recently are anything to go by, it won't load any faster, because it's already loaded all the useful stuff from disk by the time you get to the end of the unskippable videos advertising AMD GPUs and the Unreal engine.

      Simple, go into the game contents and delete the unskippable videos, the game will load even faster becasue it's not loading the videos and video player.

      Works just fine even with Steam games.

  4. What is the expected edge? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Assuming the spec sheet is accurate, the drive will use Toshiba flash and a 'Barefoot 3' controller(Indilinx, formerly OCZ, deathbed acquisition by Toshiba).

    Unsurprisingly enough, Toshiba also sells SSDs with Toshiba flash and Indilinx controllers(the only surprising part is keeping the 'OCZ' brand to do so). Where does AMD come in? I assume they aren't hoping to lose money by doing this; but I am having some trouble figuring out how.

    1. Re: What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      same thing as their radeon dram sticks. they're just slapping their name and logo on an existing product, probably to leverage and increase the awareness of the radeon brand. can't be a high margin product line...

    2. Re:What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Branding

      They are already known for gaming video cards, so it should be easy for them to sucker in a bunch of their fans to purchase their SSDs.

    3. Re:What is the expected edge? by Lazere · · Score: 1

      It's so you can run your AMD SSD with your AMD RAM brought together by your AMD CPU and your AMD graphics card inside your AMD case. Now all they need is an AMD motherboard and an AMD power supply and you'll be able to build a computer with nothing but AMD.

    4. Re:What is the expected edge? by Nemyst · · Score: 2

      What it feels like is that you'll be able to get the AMD branded ones or get the same ones straight from Toshiba for less money. Perhaps some AMD models will be OEM-only in their Toshiba designation to reduce competition. Regardless, I don't remember OCZ's Vector drives (using the Barefoot 3 controller) making waves, and the 19nm lithography is going to push reliability down. Let's just hope they stick to MLC.

      For most gamers, a Crucial MX100 would most likely be a better purchase, or if you want something fancier then Samsung's 850 Pro or even a PCI-E/SATAe/M.2 option instead.

    5. Re:What is the expected edge? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      They might be perfectly adequate drives, I haven't heard much about post-Toshiba OCZ; though it seems a bit crazy to buy company bankrupted by horrendous quality issues and then continue following its strategy; but I'm just baffled as to how they could end up being anything other than as or more expensive than the Toshiba equivalents.

      The market has certainly matured to the point where there are relatively cheap options that aren't a disaster or some JMicron mess that underperforms the HDD it replaced; but anyone buying in the low or mid range is probably going to be doing so on price. 'Adequate' would be a potentially viable strategy if you sell flash and you want to sell even more flash; but if you bring nothing to the table except ordering the parts and telling Foxconn to bang them together, that seems doubtful...

    6. Re: What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yo dawg. I heard you like AMD...

    7. Re:What is the expected edge? by trparky · · Score: 1

      OCZ? *chuckles* *snorts* *laughs* *falls off chair laughing*

      Anyways, now that I had a good laugh for the day I can say that I wouldn't hit a dog in the ass with any SSD (or any SSD made with components) from OCZ. Their reliability is shit and until Toshiba can clean up OCZ's act I won't touch an SSD made by them with someone else's ten foot pole.

    8. Re:What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you'll work for AMD, live in AMD town, and get paid in AMD blitcoins which are only redeemable at the AMD store.

    9. Re:What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://teksyndicate.com/videos/ocz-vector-150-vertex-460-review-and-benchmarks

      https://teksyndicate.com/videos/ocz-revodrive-350-pci-e-ssd-its-so-fast

      They seem like pretty gooddrives by these reviews.

    10. Re:What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It appears Toshiba is only using OCZ's name, everything in the drives is Toshiba tech.

    11. Re:What is the expected edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I truely hope so, as my OCZ Agility 4 just started showing read errors after a bit over years of really light use in a media pc.

  5. For gamers? by hooiberg · · Score: 2

    So what would be the difference between SSDs for gamers and those for non-gamers? The specs appear to be fairly normal high end for the current SSD market, but nothing exceptional. Maybe a sticker on it displaying a demon wielding an oversized SF gun?

    1. Re:For gamers? by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 1

      Gamers spend more $$$

    2. Re:For gamers? by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 4, Funny

      A sticker with ultraviolet reflectance so the black lights in your case make it look right wicked and totally worth the extra $80 you paid for commodity hardware with F4tal1ty's name on it.

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
    3. Re:For gamers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The specs appear to be fairly normal high end for the current SSD market, but nothing exceptional.

      You mean capped at the SATA bus speed. It's hard to make something significantly better than that without connecting the drive directly to a PCIe connector.

    4. Re:For gamers? by fisted · · Score: 1

      Same reason there are razors "for men" and "for women", despite being essentially the same thing just differently colored.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    5. Re:For gamers? by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      So what would be the difference between SSDs for gamers and those for non-gamers? The specs appear to be fairly normal high end for the current SSD market, but nothing exceptional. Maybe a sticker on it displaying a demon wielding an oversized SF gun?

      Get a woman in non functional but revealing body armor or space suit and put it into production!

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    6. Re:For gamers? by AvitarX · · Score: 4, Informative

      Female razors have the handle at a different angle (one more comfortable for legs and crotches vs faces).

      I learned this when I thought they were the same and god lady ones on sale, definitely not as easy to use on a face as a man's razor.

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    7. Re:For gamers? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      You're holding it wrong.

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    8. Re:For gamers? by timeOday · · Score: 1

      Cheap, fast, and unreliable, like overclocking your CPU and RAM.

    9. Re:For gamers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've thought that ladies razors were spaced differently to handle longer/thicker hair.

      I have quite thick hair on my face and I spent many years shaving with a cheap ladies razor because it did a better job than a cheap man's razor.

      Now I have a job I can buy better men's razors, though the best thing is to just not shave at all.

    10. Re:For gamers? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Your post is completely false, yet in typical Slashdot fashion idiots modded you up.
      There are different styles of razors for women - your standard razor is identical to a men's razor in basic design. It is used for arms, armpits, legs, crotch, neck, and face.
      Then there are the larger razors, often with a large block of lubricant surrounding the blades. These have a different handle design and are made for legs.

    11. Re:For gamers? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      http://image.made-in-china.com...

      is angled less than

      http://web.tradekorea.com/uplo...

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    12. Re:For gamers? by Score+Whore · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I test drove one of these for a couple of months: http://www.violin-memory.com/p...

      It delivered way more than is advertised here and wasn't connected via PCIe. We're talking 2 GB/s BW and more than 250,000 IOPS with an average response time under 200 microseconds in my testing. It is kind of spendy and heavy as fuck.

      Also I have a very large penis.

    13. Re:For gamers? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      http://image.made-in-china.com...

      is angled less than

      http://web.tradekorea.com/uplo...

      LOL! Are you fucking serious? Your best example is a pair of 10 cent disposable pieces of shit that are nearly identical?

    14. Re:For gamers? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Yes, the same brand disposables are at different angles of handle, which is exactly what I said the difference was.

      The only time I've bought lady razors was when traveling and buying disposables, and it was absolutely noticeable the difference between the equivalent male and female versions.

      --
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  6. harddrive speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    They've done some tests a while back on hard drive performance on gaming... They used very fast disks in raid and it make 0 difference. The levels are compressed, so level loading is largely cpu bound. Spending lots of money on it yielded no benefit what so ever.

    1. Re:harddrive speed by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      How long ago and what were the games? On startup, The Witcher 2 (which isn't even a very recent game anymore) seems to read several hundred MBs and then loads more for each environment. Fast random reads would seem to be a benefit there - the CPU in my laptop isn't at 100% even reading the data from SSD...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:harddrive speed by Shinobi · · Score: 2

      That depends ENTIRELY on what game. SWTOR is highly dependant on the HD. Loading into fleet on a normal HD can take a few minutes. Use a SSD, and it takes 30s. And CPU barely registers a blip until you actually fully get into the game.

    3. Re:harddrive speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As somebody with an SSD who watches a lot of twitch, I promise you, an SSD makes a huge difference. I always wonder why it's taking them so long to load a level, then remember, they probably don't have an SSD.

    4. Re:harddrive speed by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      What games did they test? I've certainly seen games where a SSD made a BIG difference to loading times (roller coaster tycoon 3 springs to mind)

      If the game just wants to load a big block of predetermined data from a sequential set of locations in a data file then HDD is fine, the problem comes when due to either lack of optimisation or the open/flexible nature of the game it needs to load lots of small peices in a non-sequential manner than a SSD makes a big difference.

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    5. Re:harddrive speed by sanosuke001 · · Score: 1

      My SSD vs. my old 10k velicoraptor loads zones in a certain MMO (not WoW) like 5s vs 30s+

      --
      -SaNo
    6. Re:harddrive speed by Smauler · · Score: 1

      I've certainly seen games where a SSD made a BIG difference to loading times (roller coaster tycoon 3 springs to mind)

      RCT3 takes about 10 seconds to start up on mine, and about 10 seconds to load a level. After that, it does everything on the fly. You'll load a level once every few hours or so (10000 seconds), so an SSD would result in a performance increase of about 0.1% on my system.

      I run a couple of cheap stock 7200rpm hard drives striped, so a bit faster than most.

    7. Re:harddrive speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'll load a level once every few hours or so (10000 seconds), so an SSD would result in a performance increase of about 0.1% on my system.

      If your gaming sessions are only 1 minute each, you'll get up to 50% more playing time out of that.

  7. Gaming? by Mr_Silver · · Score: 2

    Seems odd to call them "gaming SSDs" when they sound like just really fast SSDs. I'm actually surprised they are marketing them that way - especially since they'd reach a wider market if the didn't just target gamers.

    Plus are games really that much faster? When I bought my Samsung 840 I put everything on there. However as soon as I found out that the load times in HL2 weren't noticeably different (probably because the longest part of the "please wait" wasn't disk access) I quickly shifted the entire "steamapps" folder to my HDD.

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    1. Re:Gaming? by jawtheshark · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Gaming" means: "Fast, overpriced and we don't care about reliability".

      --
      Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    2. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      its a way to sell flakey hardware on the bleading edge to idiots with more money than brains while protecting the real power users from unstable crap.

    3. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't OCZ go out of business?

    4. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes. These are pretty much the same drives. At least the tech used is the same.

      They are not targeting all gamers, just stupid gamers who think printing "for gamers" on the SSD somehow makes it worth more.

    5. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems odd to call them 'really fast' if they're barely faster than a consumer grade (& consumer priced) Crucial MX100. It's getting hard to find a 500Gb SSD that's not limited by SATA6 bandwidth and speed is no longer much of a differentiator.

    6. Re:Gaming? by Wootery · · Score: 1

      AMD treating its customers like idiots? Say it ain't so!

    7. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ah yes, Half-Life 2, some cutting edge gaming you have going there.

    8. Re:Gaming? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      You forgot about the flames/demon/skull/half-naked-woman stickers.

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    9. Re:Gaming? by Daniel+Hoffmann · · Score: 1

      I have a Samsung 840 PRO with 256GB, it is noticeably faster for most games, specially at startup. But I could leave without it. I rarely fill out it completely and when I do I just remove some games I don't play anymore.

    10. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In what universe is 2k vs. 12k sustained 4k write IOPS "barely faster"?

    11. Re:Gaming? by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Seems odd to call them "gaming SSDs" when they sound like just really fast SSDs. I'm actually surprised they are marketing them that way - especially since they'd reach a wider market if the didn't just target gamers.

      They're not even really fast SSDs.

      550MB/s is the limit of SATA3. Something we've hit with SSDs from last year. Yes, we hit the limit of SATA3 just after SATA3 stuff started coming on the market.

      It's why Apple went PCIe with their SSDs (hitting 750MB/sec easy) - the bottleneck is no longer with the SSD or controller, it's the SATA interface.

      It's really more of a name thing since there's zero advantage going AMD SSD over going with anyone else. A Samsung 840 Evo already maxes SATA3 and comes in up to 1TB capacities. (Hint: when you see or hear 530+ MB/sec, that's the limit of SATA talking).

      It's almost pointless to measure these days - the last metric left is IOPS and that's at the point of diminishing returns when you're getting 20K, 40K IOPS.

      Now, if AMD really wanted to make a splash, they'd use PCIe and make sure you can boot off of it.

    12. Re:Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A lot of console ports have set loading times because the consoles are slow and programmers are lazy. Your SSD loads the new level then your computer just sits there.

    13. Re:Gaming? by Jahoda · · Score: 1

      So, because a game published in 2004 loads equally fast on SSD vs HDD, your conclusion is that there is no benefit in all games? Well, ok, so here's my anecdotal experience: with my Samsung 840 Pro vs. my HDD bulk disk in my workstation, the load time difference in Skyrim, Dishonored, Bioshock Infinite is hugely different. I didn't think I would mind moving these off onto the spinning disk for space reasons, and it's enough of a change that I'm getting ready to just buy one big bad SSD and be done with it. (Though I would certainly never buy something as ridiculous as a "gaming ssd").

    14. Re:Gaming? by Misagon · · Score: 1

      Those will be visible only if you connect the built-in UV LED to your fan controller.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    15. Re:Gaming? by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      In other words, they're bring back OCZ.

  8. From value brand to peddler of overpriced rebrands by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Trying to find a positive spin on this but.... no. Anyone?

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  9. Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about... by dohzer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about the 390ppm ADGG on the CKOI? What does IHS think about that?

    1. Re: Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Egg spackle.

    2. Re:Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. Way to go OP, take a nice short concise tech summary and drop into BS biz management acronym speak that completely diverges from your target audience. Next time, try to keep some synergy with your readership.

    3. Re:Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      TBH and AFAIK, IDK if dohzer is AFK ATM or just AWOL. B4N and AWYR. BOL.

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    4. Re:Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That and it's "requests" for shipments that can experience compound annual growth rate. If it were just shipments, you could order one, have one shipped, and given enough time a second one would be shipped, providing the growth rate is high enough. Unless the shipment process, or SSDs themselves can experience growth rates (spoiler: they can't) it's marketing hyperbole even with the acronym spelled out.

  10. Speeds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "top sequential read/write speeds of 550MB/s and 530MB/s, respectively."

    Current SSDs already HAVE those speeds. So why bother?

    1. Re:Speeds by nabsltd · · Score: 1

      Current SSDs already HAVE those speeds. So why bother?

      It's actually pretty easy to get those same speeds using 5-8 spinning disks in a RAID stripe. Where SSDs really shine is in random reads and writes.

      I use both on my desktop...a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO and five 2TB Western Digital Red (5400rpm) drives in RAID-5. Uncached reads and writes are about 400MB/sec on the array, and about 580MB/sec on the SSD. The two biggest differences are the SSD achieves those speeds at pretty much every block size of at least 4KB, while the disks need 64KB block sizes, and the SSD can also do so in random access.

      Note that even an "uncached" write is cached with Samsung's "Rapid" mode, and the SSD can sustain "writes returned to calling app" at over 2GB/sec for about 5 seconds, assuming you have enough RAM and a UPS for safety. With caching, level loading in games is almost completely CPU bound on my system, as it has 64GB of RAM.

    2. Re:Speeds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's actually pretty easy to get those same speeds using 5-8 spinning disks in a RAID stripe.

      I think you and I must have different concepts of the word "easy". Yes, you can get equivalent throughput with a large RAID array.

      Besides, OP was asking why someone should get *this* particular SSD when the speeds are equivalent to standard SSDs, not why you should get any SSD compared to a HD.

  11. Re:From value brand to peddler of overpriced rebra by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

    Overpriced devices sold to people who are not me may result in lower prices for me due to economy of scale.

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  12. Sure, 39% CAGR, but what about... by andreas.hummelbrunne · · Score: 1

    Could you... use fewer Acronyms? I didn't understand anything.

  13. SSD to rule the world. by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I recently added a 64gig SSD To a Panasonic Toughbook CF-18. yes a billion year old PATA laptop and it made an insane difference. Enough that the laptop was useable again for emergency services tasks. So instead of spending $4500 per truck again for new toughbooks, we are just upgrading all of the old laptops to SSD drives.

    Dirt cheap too if you use mSATA and mSATA to PATA adapters.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:SSD to rule the world. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      I updated an old Pentium II Thinkpad with a 512MB compactflash with an IDE adapter. It takes longer to power-up the laptop and go through the BIOS bootup sequence than to load Windows 98SE.

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    2. Re:SSD to rule the world. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your swap may be faster then main memory at that point.

    3. Re:SSD to rule the world. by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      Our local city government is doing the same thing with its entire fleet - police, fire, electricity, water/sewer, and trash. It's not that many units, perhaps 100 computers (we're a small city), but they're still saving $250K by "refreshing" instead of replacing.

      Nothing makes a slow computer feel faster than an SSD upgrade.

    4. Re:SSD to rule the world. by MattGWU · · Score: 1

      Damn, that's a good idea. I have a CF-27 running Gentoo or something, that I love to pieces but not really sure what to do with anymore. Thing used to be my daily laptop.

      --
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  14. Re:From value brand to peddler of overpriced rebra by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's an SSD, the entire point is to not spin.

  15. write speeds not important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    games generally write very little to the drive. it's all about read speeds.

  16. Top read / write speed are pointless for consumers by haruchai · · Score: 1

    Since those are only reached at queue depths at 16, 32 or higher - which you'll never reach on a desktop machine.
    What you want is a drive with high IOPS at queue depths of 1, 2 and 4, maybe 8 as well.
    The higher the IOPS at the lowest queues, the more responsive your machine feels.

    --
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  17. TIL; AMD will release an SSD with a skull on it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To me thats the only thing different about gaming gear (well... and flames!)

  18. Re:From value brand to peddler of overpriced rebra by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up.

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  19. Re:From value brand to peddler of overpriced rebra by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Welcome to the no spin zone.

  20. I still remember... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... when gaming was the rocket science of computing. All the new and interesting stuff was first tested on gamers. Since the last console generation made devs work on the same hardware for almost a decade, it became irrelevant to get a faster, better hardware. They managed to kill rapid innovation and the pc market. Now when you get "gamer" stuff, it's all about the looks.

  21. Toshi(t)ba / OCZ? by Chas · · Score: 1

    NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE!

    Sorry, NOT playing that game again.

    Crappy product from a customer-hostile company?

    Fuck that noise.

    Maybe AMD will make a sound marketing choice based on sound engineering again. But I'm not going to volunteer to hold my breath.

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  22. No by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

    AMD, come on. Focus on refreshing your top lineup of CPUs, or become irrelevant.

  23. SATA bottleneck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yawn. Plain vanilla SATA SSDs are a dime a dozen.

    Wake me up when NVME enabled, 4 lane PCI express, M.2 or SATA Express SSDs become available.

    SATA was designed for spinning rust drives and 6 gigabits (Along with encoding overhead) is a significant bottleneck

    Even that's not enough. Even if your PCI express connected SSD is fast, most still present themselves as generic AHCI devices. That works, but was also designed for old hard drives that can realistically only read and write one thing at a time. Only one queue, and a shallow queue depths. SSDs have no such limitation. All SSD controllers read and write multiple flash chips. NVME is a new protocol to replace AHCI and it's designed with flash storage in mind. Lots of deep queues no waiting in line for your data.

    I'm sure the filesystem is next. Nearly all are designed for hard drives (outside of a few designed for embedded systems to store data on raw flash with minimal abstraction), and there are improvements to be made because waiting for platters to spin and heads to move is a thing of the past.

    1. Re:SATA bottleneck by phayes · · Score: 1

      VOTE PARENT UP, it's the most insightful comment posted so far!

      I came into this to see if anyone else noticed that these supposedly high end SSD drives are still using SATA 3.0 & an anon beat me to it.

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    2. Re:SATA bottleneck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about these?
      http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/options/storage/solidstate/adapters/iopsmlc/index.html

  24. hum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But I read somewhere this week that it's made by toshiba and they have crappy ssd's.

  25. What's a CAGR? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone had to ask.

    1. Re:What's a CAGR? by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      Compound Annual Growth Rate

  26. great... by SuperDre · · Score: 1

    And the news arrives just on the day my Intel 330 SSD at work died (which is the second SSD which gave me problems).. Even though I have a Samsung 840 EVO at home, I still am very hesitant on SSD's in regard to durability and reliability...

  27. call me old fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but I kinda like load screens. I have a 10k rpm velociraptor for my games and some stuff already loads too quickly for my liking (and its not like the HDD is super fast).

    modern games were built with loading screens in mind, and some loading screens can be pretty fancy. I like to see em.

  28. Same speed as everyone else by bobjr94 · · Score: 1

    For the past year or two more and more drive are stuck at the 550mb/second mark. Where is sata 4, running at 1200mb/s or better ?

  29. All I can figure by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    is AMD wants to be able to sell you a PC ready to go. APU+Storage+Ram = computer, and in a few more years the APUs will be fast enough to hang with current gen consoles.

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