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AMD Launches Radeon R7 Series Solid State Drives With OCZ
MojoKid (1002251) writes AMD is launching a new family of products today, but unless you follow the rumor mill closely, it's probably not something you'd expect. It's not a new CPU, APU, or GPU. Today, AMD is launching its first line of solid state drives (SSDs), targeted squarely at AMD enthusiasts. AMD is calling the new family of drives, the Radeon R7 Series SSD, similar to its popular mid-range line of graphics cards. The new Radeon R7 Series SSDs feature OCZ and Toshiba technology, but with a proprietary firmware geared towards write performance and high endurance. Open up one of AMD's new SSDs and you'll see OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller on board—the same controller used in the OCZ Vector 150, though it is clocked higher in these drives. That controller is paired to A19nm Toshiba MLC (Multi-Level Cell) NAND flash memory and a DDR3-1333MHz DRAM cache. The 120GB and 240GB drives sport 512MB of cache memory, while the 480GB model will be outfitted with 1GB. Interestingly enough, AMD Radeon R7 Series SSDs are some of the all-around, highest-performing SATA SSDs tested to date. IOPS performance is among the best seen in a consumer-class SSD, write throughput and access times are highly-competitive across the board, and the drive offered consistent performance regardless of the data type being transferred. Read performance is also strong, though not quite as stand-out as write performance.
The R7 series originally referred to the GPU. What happens when I order a GPU and they ship me a hard drive instead?
Someone at AMD isn't thinking very hard about this.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
At least Amazon has a track record of making decent hardware. The existing Kindle products are pretty nice.
OCZ has a track record of making terrible SSDs.
I'm glad to see AMD is using their development budget wisely and not wasting it on other stuff, like it making their x86 cores competitive versus Intel
I knew someone would bring up OCZ's reputation. News flash: they've been wholly owned by Toshiba since January. Why they decided to keep the tarnished brand is a mystery to me.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I realize that it is entirely anecdotal, but my miserable early experience with OCZ disks seems to match others, to the point that would never in a million years purchase another OCZ product again. Heck, it seems mighty telling that they're not even considered on the tech report longetivity test:
http://techreport.com/review/2...
Maybe an OCZ with a sticker, but who cares, really? Quality product, good price. Not much to hate here.
At least Amazon has a track record of making decent hardware. The existing Kindle products are pretty nice.
OCZ has a track record of making terrible SSDs.
AMD are giving these a 4 yr warranty, which means they must have some faith in them.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Dammit, you said it first:
1. Radeon R7, now for SSDs? How confusing and utterly stupid. The geniuses couldn't be bothered to come up with a new name?
2. OCZ and their reputation. AMD and their reputation. Whatever reviewers may say, those in the know will stay away, and if these drives crap out as well, OCZ will now stain AMD as well (not that they needed any more of that).
[digression]Otherwise, the Nvidia bit...can't really comment as my last laptop was running an Nvidia IGP (GForce7000 + nForce 610m--probably the last thing Nvidia made without some form of hardware decoding for video), and ran just fine with AHCI sata, forcedeth networking, and nvidia pata (for the CD). The graphics were finally supported by Nouveau around 3.10, but stopped working with 3.14 (I'm strongly suspecting this is actually a KMS issue as I'm having the exact same trouble with a Intel IGP laptop).[/digression]
Anyway, this really does make me wonder even more than I already was if AMD is being prepped for a fire sale to some company, and if so, who's pulling the strings? It can't be Intel or Nvidia, I doubt it would be ARM themselves, so who does that leave that could use an alternative x86/x64 IP, possibly being combined with ARM IP, and the only graphics that can hope to stand up to Nvidia?
Considering how a lot of problems with SSDs are generally related to various obscure firmware bugs and considering just how horrible ATI/AMD is at writing software for their hardware, I would run for my fucking life.
> firmware geared towards write performance and high endurance
because stock firmware was geared towards slowness and losing data ...
>480GB
>Endurance Rated for 30GB/day host writes for 4 years under typical client workloads
for math challenged: this is 43TB of written data, after that your guarantee is VOID and NULL
43TB on a 480TB drive, this is more than a joke, this is spitting in your face. This comes from Toshiba - manufacturer of both controller and flash memory, party that is best informed about REAL endurance capabilities of that combo.
In case you are wondering - Samsung doesnt impose any write limitations on their 3 year guarantee for 840 EVO drives. Both drives look pretty much the same in tests.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Yes, im sure Toshiba knows best how good that drive is
this is why they limit warranty to 43TB of written data ... on a 480GB drive. The LOWEST write limit in the industry.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Their claim is they are focusing on reliability and write endurance but it looks like they have some of the lowest endurance in the industry.
Even the drive it is supposed to be a bit of a clone from is rated much higher.
AMD R7: 4GB for 4 years = 43TB (Odd that they don't say this is dependent on drive size, which it would be.
OCZ Vector 150: 50GB for 5 years = 91 TB (Also not scaled for drive size)
Samsung 840: 1000 cycles. In their smallest drive this would be around 120 TB. Samsung is using lower endurance TLC here so this is even more odd.
Intel 730: 70TB over their 5 year warranty is 127 TB Highest of them all for MLC.
Now in real life, the AMD and OCZ drives may go much further before they fail, but you have to go off of their ratings for comparisons or all hell breaks loose (Tests have shown the Samsung drives lasting over 3000 cycles before beginning to reallocate sectors). Especially for the larger drives (A 240GB drive should have double the write endurance of a 120GB drive).
So yeah I find it odd that endurance is one of their talking points when they have by far the lowest endurance of any of the common drives out there, including the supposedly very similar Vector 150.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Somebody has to say it. Anybody who would so much as touch with a 10 foot pole any SSD contaminated with the OCZ brand needs to have his head examined. Please, don't anybody claim they don't know the sad infamous history of OCZ SSDs.
Sorry, but no way in hell.
OCZ crashed and burned its goodwill in the industry for a reason.
Toshiba, one of the most customer-hostile electronics companies I've ever come across bought them.
Sure, Toshiba COULD have improved the OCZ line drastically. At this point, it's a Zenith-type brand label and nothing more.
And if it means having to deal with those noxious pricks at Toshiba? NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL!
I'd rather buy something like a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro and film myself:
Running software to burn it over it's write limits till it dies.
Repeatedly throw it on the ground from the top of a 10 story building.
Run over it with a forklift a couple times.
Douse it in lighter fluid and light it up.
Wipe my ass with the remains.
Emasculate myself with an ice cream scooper.
Then try to the drive, the video and the schlong into Samsung demanding warranty service.
I'd have better luck with everything working out okay than I would for even a minor problem with Toshiba.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!