AMD R7 Series 240GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. AMD R7 Series 240GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

If you haven't upgraded your system yet to include a Solid State Drive, there has been no better time than the present. Recent months has seen a raft of new drives released to market at various price points. The launch today might surprise a few people however – AMD have released their new SSD which they are calling the ‘R7 series' … after their graphics cards. The drive is built for them by OCZ and features a high clocked Barefoot 3 controller.

I have to admit a certain amount of surprise when I was told that AMD would be releasing Solid State Drives with the R7 branding. While KitGuru hoped that AMD would have their own controller for these drives, they have entered into a partnership with a well known drive manufacturer.

OCZ are the high profile partner with AMD, donating their Barefoot 3 controller and pairing it up with the latest A19 NAND from Toshiba.

AMD's R7 Series SSD fits in between the high performance Vector 150 Series drive and the Vertex 460 Series. The Vertex 460 for ‘everyday users' is rated at 20GB a day under a 3 year warranty. The AMD R7 Series SSD for ‘gamers' is rated at 30 GB a day with a 4 year warranty. The Vector 150 for ‘professionals' has a 50GB day rating under a 5 year warranty.

On paper, the R7 drives are delivering very high levels of performance. AMD rate the drive speeds at close to the real world limitations of the SATA 3 interface at 550 MB/s (Sequential read). IOPS performance on the 480GB drive is rated at 100k, which is very high – even outperforming the 1TB Samsung 840 EVO. Reliability is one of the key focus points, with AMD showing a 2.3 million hours MTBF (mean time before failure). This is even higher than OCZ's own Vertex 460 drive.

AMD are releasing three capacities at the following prices:
120GB £59.42 pre vat (74.42 euros)
240GB £97.46 pre vat (122.05 euros)
480GB £177.68 pre vat (195.75 euros)

AMD R7 Series SSD Overview:

• SATA III 6Gb/s compatible with SATA II 3Gb/s.
• 2.5 inch Ultra Slim 7mm Form Factor.
• 30GB per day endurance rating.
• MLC Flash memory
• TRIM support
• AES 256-bit Encryption.
• Acronis True Image HD (data migration software).
• 3.5 inch SSD Adapter for Desktops.
• 4 Year Warranty.

The AMD R7 Series drives arrive in a red and black box, immediately indicative of the AMD brand.

The rear of the box lists some specifications, including maximum sequential read and write speeds and claimed IOPS performance.

The bundle includes a 3.5 inch desktop mounting bracket, literature on the product, mounting screws and a code for Acronis True Image. This is fantastic software that can mirror your operating system drive directly to the SSD for a smooth change over.

The AMD R7 Series 240GB SSD ships in a heavy little metal chassis, with specifications listed on the rear sticker. The drive measures 7mm thick making it an ideal partner for a super thin ultraportable laptop.

The OCZ Barefoot 3 M00 controller can be seen on the PCB, with the A19nm Toshiba Multi Level Cell (MLC) Flash. AMD claim the drive consumes 0.6 watts when idle and up to 2.7 watts under load. OCZ have clocked the Barefoot 3 controller higher in these AMD units to improve on bandwidth when compared to the Vertex 460. The drive is configured with 7% over provisioning to give the final figure of 240GB.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main system:
Kitguru Test Rig 3

Other Drives
Angelbird 512GB wrk
Hynix SH920/910A
OCZ ARC 100 240GB
OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Intel 520 Series 240GB
Intel 730 240GB
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
OCZ Vector 150 256GB
OCZ Vector 240GB
OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (1.4 fw)
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB
Intel 730 240GB
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SDD
SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB
OCZ Agility 4 256GB
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
Samsung 830 Series 512GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS
ADATA S510 120GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
OCZ Octane 512GB (fw 1.13)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 3.0.3.
AS SSD.
IOMeter.

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3.

Overall performance is good and the 4K QD32 performance is right at the top of our chart.

We switch to the 0Fill setting which allows for compressible data. The Barefoot controller deals with both equally well.


Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed in the last year.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.

Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Read performance is close to the limit for the SATA 3 interface – hitting 552 MB/s. Write performance is also very strong, peaking at 525MB/s.


Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

AS SSD deals exclusively with incompressible data. We already know how good the Barefoot 3 controller is with this from previous reviews- but the AMD R7 Series 240GB scores very close to the top of our chart. The final score of 1,180 points is actually one of the best we have achieved to date.

Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months.
IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary between the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.

There is no doubt that the AMD R7 Series 240GB delivers some fantastic results in our IOPS tests – higher than The Vertex 460 GB 240GB which we tested over here.
While OCZ seem to have a somewhat tarnished reputation with many readers on our Facebook page, Kitguru still rates the Barefoot 3 controller highly – We have never had one of the Barefoot 3 controlled drives fail. The R7 SSD delivers fantastic incompressible and compressible data throughput with sequential read and write speeds close to the real world limitation of the SATA 3 interface.

The AMD R7 Series 240GB drive is one of the highest performing Solid State drives we have tested this year. OCZ have increased the clock speed of the Barefoot 3 controller in the R7 unit and we can see that the IOPS performance has improved significantly over even the Vertex 460 which we reviewed earlier in the year.

We can see no discernible weaknesses in any of our tests. Both read and write performance data rate in the top 5% of SATA 3 drives and 4K random read and write performance is class leading.

The biggest challenge for AMD will be taking market share from leading drives in the enthusiast sector. There is no doubt the R7 Series 240GB is faster than the ever popular Samsung 840 EVO 250GB, but it is going to ship with a price premium.

At time of publication the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB is available on Amazon for £83.99 inc vat, after dropping from an original retail price of £145 inc vat. AMD told us the R7 Series 240GB model will ship at £97.46 pre VAT, so we would expect to see this drive for sale between £115 and £120 in the UK. So around £30 more than the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB.

The 480GB version of the AMD R7 Series drive will be released for £177.68 pre vat, or around £213 inc vat when it hits UK stores. The Samsung 840 EVO 500GB has dropped in price recently to £159.99 inc vat. AMD's larger R7 SSD is therefore around £53 more expensive.

I feel the AMD R7 Series 240GB SSD deserves to sell well, but the pricing may be an issue for the company, especially as the enthusiast user is determined to get the best possible price for a fast, large capacity drive.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• Exceptional performance.
• IOPS is class leading.
• incompressible equals compressible.
• strong bundle.

Cons:

• Expensive.

Kitguru says: An expensive, but extremely formidable drive which delivers some class leading results.

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