Introduction

AMD certainly needs no introduction as they are one of the most important companies for enthusiasts and gamers, supplying the toys they love. With their 30 year anniversary taking place this week, AMD's footprint in the CPU and graphics market has been strong as they have not long ago introduced AMD-branded DDR3 memory modules and are now entering the SSD market, which seems to put them on the road toward an all-AMD PC.

Since AMD has no SSD-design-specific knowledge of their own and doesn't build any SSD controllers or flash chips at Globalfoundries, AMD teamed up with OCZ, which has recently been acquired by Toshiba. OCZ has their own controller designs (Indilinx) and Toshiba supplies their own flash chips, so their cooperation with AMD seems like a fruitful one.

AMD's first Radeon SSD product, the Radeon R7 SSD we review today, follows the same naming scheme as their recent graphics cards, with the R7 targeting gamers, leaving space for the enthusiast R9 nomenclature above and their R5 mainstream descriptor below.

At launch, the Radeon R7 SSD is available in capacities of 120 GB ($99), 240 GB ($164), and 480 GB ($299). All drives come with a four year warranty OCZ handles directly.

The Radeon R7 SSD is basically a clocked down OCZ Vector 150 with the latest Toshiba A19 NAND flash chips from Toshiba. The Barefoot 3 M00 is its controller; it delivers slightly better performance than the M10 in the Vertex 460.