AMD has released its second range of Radeon branded SSDs, the Radeon R3 SSD series, which will replace the Radeon R7 SSDs. The new Radeon R3 SSD series are aimed at the value market and are meant to replace traditional hard drives. The drives are said to be manufactured and guaranteed by Galt Inc. in Taiwan and sport the following features:

• Value across the range of 120, 240, 480 and 960GB sizes,
• 10x speed boost over traditional HDDs,
• A 2.5-inch form factor, 7mm thick,
• A 3 year warranty

The SATA III 6Gbps drives use TLC NAND made by SK Hynix and the Silicon Motion SM2256KX controller. The 240GB and 480GB models are the top performers and these deliver quite a performance boost in write speeds compared to the 120GB capacity SSD model. In write speeds these drives are all pretty equal. Like other TLC NAND-based drives, the Radeon R3 SSDs use a part of its flash memory in pseudo-SLC mode for caching and performance-acceleration purposes.

The drives are now available in the US and Canada priced as follows; $40.99 for the 120GB model, $69.99 for the 240GB model and $136.99 for the 480GB model.

AMD intends introduce new higher-end Radeon SSDs towards the end of the year. The new family will include faster SATA drivers as well as M.2/NVMe drives for future platforms. It is not clear whether AMD will choose the same or a new supplier for the new SSDs.

AMD has been marketing its Radeon-branded memory modules and SSDs as products optimized for its platforms. By now, Radeon-branded non-graphics hardware seems to have become a noteworthy part of AMD’s business, which is why it is gradually expanding the lineup of such products.

By selling rebadged components, AMD saves money by not investing much in research.