Realtek is building a high-end SSD controller for ultra-fast NVMe drives

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These controllers will enable read and write speeds that are on par with Samsung's 970 Pro SSDs.

Wikimedia via Solomon203. Click for original.

Wikimedia via Solomon203. Click for original. (Image credit: Wikimedia via Solomon203)

Realtek might be best known for its onboard audio solutions, but for the past couple of years, it's been trying to make a name for itself in the SSD controller market as well. Things have been slow going in that regard, with its focus mostly on entry-level drives. That's about to change.

The company is expanding its focus to the performance category and is getting ready to introduce a couple of new controllers, the RTS5762 and RTS5763DL. While those model numbers don't mean much at the moment, they could become far more recognizable over the coming months, if they live up to the hype.

Realtek demonstrated both controllers at Computex earlier this month. Anandtech was on hand to snap some picks extract some info, and in one of the pictures, there's a card billing the RTS5762 as the "fastest client PCIe M.2 SSD controller" in the world.

That will be Realtek's flagship controller for the foreseeable future. The company didn't go into too many details, though Realtek did say it supports various types of 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND flash memory. It also shared some performance specs, and that's where things get interesting.

According to Realtek, the RTS5762 is capable of delivering up to 3,500MB/s of sequential read performance and up to 3,000MB/s of sequential writes. As a point of reference, Samsung's flagship 970 Pro is rated to deliver the same read speed, and up to 2,700MB/s of sequential write performance.

The RTS7536DL is less interesting, in that it's another controller for the lower-end SSD market. However, it supports AES256 encryption, a feature that is not always found on entry-level SSDs.

On the performance side, Realtek will be going up against some heavy hitters, including Intel, Phison, Samsung, and Silicon Motion.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).