Our first test on the X470 motherboard mentioned that the X470 motherboard will be presented with a $19-aware software AMD StoreMI technology. Unfortunately, the software used by AMD was not perfect. At that time, we did not evaluate this technology. analysis.
Fortunately, many issues can be resolved through time. Now that we have finally got AMD StoreMI's supporting software, let's take a look at whether this technology is a chicken rib or an artifact that enhances the user experience.
What is AMD StoreMI?
AMD StoreMI is a technology provided with the X470 motherboard. As long as the X470 motherboard can be used, its greatest role is to speed up the traditional mechanical hard disk that is slow to read and write.
Everyone knows that using SSDs will be fast, but 1TB capacity SSDs that can satisfy most consumer storage needs are too expensive, so now most of our consumers can only choose one kind of compromise, that is, system and often read The written file is mounted on a small-capacity SSD, and then the large file, the game is still on a slow read and write mechanical hard disk.
The advantage of this is that, compared to using only mechanical hard disks, we are very responsive in the daily operation of web browsing, viewing of desktop files, etc. The user experience is optimized without spending too much money, but the disadvantage is read/write. When the mechanical hard disk files/games/programs, the system feedback is still slow and heartbreaking.
and AMD StoreMI integrates the HDD, SSD, and part of the memory (up to 2GB of DDR4 memory) into a single storage unit. This speeds up the slower HDD reading and writing. It also allows us to read and write files on mechanical hard disks quickly. Fly up.
In our traditional computer model, the file storage address needs to be manually managed by our users. However, with the AMD StoreMI enabled, the system intelligent learning algorithm continuously optimizes the common file location. Move frequently accessed files to the fastest read/write device.
This feature is similar to Intel's Ao Teng, which uses a faster reading and writing device as a cache for slower reading and writing devices, and accelerates reading and writing of slow devices. However, many consumers know that Ao Tang exists. Occupy M.2 interface, boot into the system to use, and many other shortcomings, then let's take a look at AMD StoreMI technology is not a similar problem.
Test platform and instructions
This test platform adopted the combination of the flagship of the second-generation Ryzen and ASUS ROG C7H (WI-FI), and N hard disks for emergency use.
The purpose of this test is to test the performance of AMD StoreMI technology in read and write performance tests and actual daily use, and to compare whether the combination of mechanical disks and SSDs is qualitatively improved. In addition to this, the ease of use of this technology will also be tested. Advantages and disadvantages.
Software installation and enablement
First of all, we go to the official website to download and install software, and now the official website has begun to provide AMD StoreMI software download.
The installation process has nothing to say, although it is all in English, but we just keep clicking Next, Next and Next. It may be that some users will pop up a warning near the end of the installation process, meaning that some components of the software need to install Java 1.7 or In later versions, do you need to install?
After the installation is complete, the desktop will appear as a shortcut to the software. Obviously, the software has just been made. There is no Chinese version. The dozens of pages of the software's manual are also in English. It is indeed not very friendly to the Chinese people. This needs teasing.
Open AMD StoreMI software, is also purely English, here will display two options, the first applies to the user has a ssd and a hdd total hard drive, one of which is installed system disk, the other is empty, the official proposal The user first puts the system on the mechanical hard disk. The third line is the second option that is applicable when the user has three hard disks and wants to fuse the two hard disks that are installed outside the system.
For example, here my system is installed on GALAXY Gamer 480GB, and I would like to integrate the Samsung 860EVO and Western Digital Blu-ray with AMD StoreMI technology, so I chose the third option.
Then it will ask the user if the software can divide the 2GB memory into the accelerated cache of the merged hard disk. In order to test whether the AMD StoreMI technology is really useful, we can choose here.
We will soon be able to see the prompt to create a new hard disk successfully.
At this point we open the disk management in my computer management, you can see that disk 0 and disk 2 have no capacity, they are fused into a new disk 4 we first simply called it AMD StoreMI hard disk. Then we come See how this new disk performance works.
Disk continuous, random speed test
Performance Testing In order to make the test result more intuitive, we also tested the read and write performance of the 860 EVO 256GB and the Western Digital Blue Disk 2TB, and then we put together the results of the 860 EVO, the Western Digital Blue Disk and the AMD StoreMI Hard Drive. Can be very intuitive to see if this technology is useless.
AS SSD Benchmark Test:
Test summary: AMD StoreMI technology is indeed a new species for the storage session. In the traditional hard drive read/write tests, we can see that the AMD StoreMI hard drive has experienced abnormal performance in a number of tests, and we analyze them one by one.
In continuous read and write results, AMD StoreMI's hard disk read performance is staggering, we can remember, when we use AMD StoreMI to create a new hard disk, divide the 2GB memory as a new hard disk cache, and then according to the read speed , We guessed that the software reads the speed measured by the data on the memory.
In read response time, the read response time of the AMD StoreMI hard disk is also bizarre. It can only be understood that the driver needs to spend a lot of time looking for the read data in three different storage media (memory, SSD and HDD). And other literacy results are more in line with expectations, far better than HDD, but slightly inferior to SSD. Of course, testing with a single piece of software does not indicate anything. We continue to test.
CrystalDiskMark test:
Test summary: Whether randomly reading or reading AMD Store MI's hard drive performance is still scary, but writing is not as good as a pure SSD. The test performance is consistent with the performance in the AS SSD Benchmark.
DiskSpeedTest:
Test summary:The relative performance of the three hard disk tests is basically consistent with the above software, but this time, the AMD StoreMI hard disk read performance is not so burst, It seems that the software driver is not perfect , Causes different software to have large differences in test results.
Anvil`s Storage Utilities test:
Western Digital Blue Disk 2TB
Samsung 860 EVO 250GB
AMD StoreMI hard drive
Test summary : Anvil's Storage Utilities can fully see the performance of a hard disk, where AMD StoreMI's read performance is still very good, write performance is slightly inferior to the Samsung 860 EVO.
ATTO Disk Benchmark test:
Samsung 860 EVO 250GB
Western Digital Blue Disk 2TB
AMD StoreMI hard drive
Test instruction:
ATTO Disk Benchmark is an easy-to-use disk transfer rate detection software that can be used to detect the read and write rates of hard disks, USB flash drives, memory cards and other removable disks. It can monitor storage devices for various sizes Fragmented file read and write speeds, such as 4KB results are read and written many 4KB size, a total of 256MB size folder speed.
In theory, the more fragmented files, the more fragmented, the slower the reading and writing speed of storage devices.
It can be seen from the test that the AMD StoreMI is most efficient when reading files with sizes of 1 and 2MB, and can reach nearly 7000MB/s. This is basically the speed of reading and writing of the memory. However, it is strange that the file size is larger than 2MB. , The reading speed suddenly fell to around 4500MB/s.
Daily application testing
Of course, the benchmark performance test can only reflect the theoretical performance of the hard disk. We also need to combine it with the performance in daily applications to reach a conclusion.
Test summary: In various daily applications, AMD StoreMI hard disk is not as good as the 86 EVO 250GB in the decompression test of a file. Other performances are basically consistent with the performance of the Samsung 860 EVO 250GB. Now let's take a look at the stability of the AMD StoreMI hard disk in transmission.
Hard disk recovery
After the test is finished, we will try to restore the hard drive next time. We must say that this is the most troublesome part of a winter.
We open the AMD StoreMI software again. At this time, only the last option, Change Settings, is selectable. Because a winter cannot find the original screenshot, I first use the screenshots before the AMD StoreMI hard disk was created to help explain it. Please do not kill it. Winter Festival.
At this point we can click on a Remove option. After clicking, the software will separate the two hard drives that have been merged together.
This process is very long, and this winter has not yet completed this operation until the end of work. About 3 hours later, we can see that Disk 0 and Disk 2 are finally back.
This is not finished yet. At this moment, the AMD StoreMI driver is still installed on the mechanical hard disk. We need to open the AMD StoreMI software once again, and the driver is deleted to restore the original appearance.
To restore the original appearance, of course, this also means that what you originally stored on AMD Store MI's hard drive has been cleared. Surprisingly surprised, is not surprising?
This is also understandable because AMD StoreMI driver files are intelligently stored on two hard disks. It may be that different files of the same game are stored on SSDs and HHDs, respectively. When we separate two disks, AMD Store MI drives them. Can not complete the task of intelligent mobile data, the data is naturally empty, that is to say, open AMD StoreMI function is basically an irreversible process, unless your data are gone.
AMD StoreMI Technical Analysis and Speculation
In fact, AMD StoreMI is a software that combines SSD and HDD to form a hybrid hard disk. When we write files, the system will first write the files to the SSD. Then AMD StoreMI will intelligently determine whether the files are commonly used according to the user's habits. Remaining frequently used files in SSDs. Infrequently used files such as videos, pictures, etc., are moved to the mechanical hard disk when the disk is idle..
AMD official data also shows that when we replace SATA SSD with NVMe SSD, The read and write speed of AMD StoreMI will become the same read and write speed as NVMe SSD.
New AMD StoreMI Hard Disk
970 EVO 1TB
Then a winter also tried it, using the Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and the Western Digital Blue Disk 2TB to form a new AMD StoreMI hard drive, write speed really turned into a NVMe SSD level.
We can also see in the above test that the read speed of the AMD StoreMI hard disk is very explosive. It is guessed that using the memory for the new hard disk speed up results, but this is not very obvious in the actual application test, the game loading speed is Consistent with pure SSD.
Evaluation Room Summary
Conceptually, AMD StoreMI is software that helps you manage disks and files intelligently. Put common software on the SSD and put it on the HDD Whether this software works well or not depends on how smart it is. A clever Guan Guan is a good steward, an unwise steward, it's better than not.
This also means that this technology can be continuously improved through user feedback. Integrating the above tests, in fact, the advantages and disadvantages of this technology are obvious. We can list them separately.
There are three advantages of this technology in AMD StoreMI. The most important thing is that it can intelligently help users manage file storage addresses. This is simply the gospel of lazy cancer patients. Many inventions that have promoted social progress in history have been invented for lazy people;
The second is that after this function is enabled, all the files I move on this disk are written to ssd first and then moved. The file transfer is performed at the SSD transfer speed. On the surface, the user seems to have a large-capacity solid state. Its third contrast Intel's proud Teng we do not need to purchase additional hardware.
But the technical shortcomings are also obvious. The first step to turn this feature on is irreversible, unless your data is gone. This also means that if you use a slag SSD and HDD to start this technology, If one day your SSD is scrapped, then the data of your entire hard drive included in the HDD is gone.;
Finally, by comprehensively testing the above, we can see that the write performance of AMD StoreMI hard disk is slightly inferior to that of the original pure SSD. No matter if the 860 EVO or 970 EVO is used, the performance of the SSD will be partially lost. Finally, this technology is provided with the X470 mainboard. If you want to use this function with the AMD 300 Series motherboard, you need to spend $19. At this time, consumers need to measure whether it is useful to themselves.
In general, this technology is a good benefit for consumers who purchase the X470 motherboard. If you have a reliable SSD, you can actually use this technology boldly. However, if you are not a user of the X470 motherboard, it is recommended that you Waiting for a while to wait until the technology is better and then start, after all, it is not even the Chinese version of the manual is not, is still a very early product.
