AMD Unveils NVMe RAID Support For Threadripper And Its Killer X399 Platform
With a plethora of PCIe lanes at its disposal, AMD is promising some stellar storage performance with this new NVMe RAID driver. "In our own performance testing, we’ve been seeing some blistering results from our test systems—a monstrous 21.2GB/s from six disks in RAID0," said AMD in a blog post. "But RAID users know that scaling matters, too, and X399 NVMe RAID still looked great in our lab: 6.00X read scaling, and 5.38X write scaling, from one to six disks.
"Performance will naturally vary based on the model and quantity of SSDs you use, plus the test pattern of your benchmark, but it’s clear that our free NVMe RAID solution can scale and scale fast."
AMD says that its NVMe RAID driver enables RAID 0, 1 or 10 arrays. In addition, as long as just a single GPU is installed in your gaming rig, you can setup a RAID array with up to six NVMe SSDs without the need for additional adapters.
The new X399 driver is available in the AMD RAIDXpert2 package, which you can be downloaded from AMD’s support website (it's currently only supports on Windows 10 64-bit (Build 1703 or newer). The package includes the AMD RAIDXpert2 RAID Management utility and the NVMe RAID driver.
In order to get up and running, you will need to upgrade your motherboard to the latest BIOS with NVMe RAID support enabled and of course download the previously mentioned RAIDXpert2 software package. You will then need to install at least two NVMe SSDs in your system.
With that that out of the way, you have the option to either 1) use the motherboard BIOS to create your new RAID array, or 2) do so within Windows 10 with the RAIDXpert2 utility. We should also mention that AMD's NVMe RAID solution is bootable and is supported on all Ryzen Threadripper processors.
You will need to check with your motherboard manufacturer to make sure that the latest BIOS enabling NVMe RAID is available to download. As for the RAIDXpert2 software, you can download it right here.
