OCZ's RevoDrive Preview: An Affordable PCIe SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 25, 2010 2:15 AM ESTRandom Read/Write Speed
This test reads/writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. All requests are 4KB aligned.
Compared to a single Vertex 2, the RevoDrive is nearly twice the performance. The Revo actually outperforms our two Vertex 2s in RAID-0 thanks to the controller on the card. This is more the exception rather than the rule however, Intel’s ICH10R is one of the fastest desktop SATA 3Gbps controllers we’ve ever seen.
At low queue depths random write performance doesn’t actually improve that much. A single Vertex 2 SSD is already running at close to peak performance here. Compared to last year’s more expensive Z-Drive m84 the performance improvement is tremendous.
Crank up the queue depth for a particularly intensive workload and you’ll see the RevoDrive separate itself from a single drive:
At over 300MB/s there’s no single SATA 3Gbps drive that could deliver this sort of performance. And honestly it’s in these high queue depth scenarios that the RevoDrive really shines. The majority of desktop users simply aren’t pushing this many IOs at a given time, but if you are the Revo won’t disappoint. A pair of Vertex 2s in RAID-0 won’t either. It all comes down to cost and preference.
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orangpelupa - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
"It'll offer up to twice the performance of a Vertex 2 SSD for only $20 more when it ships in July."lol i read that wrong.
and though the SSD only priced @ $20 >_<
HollyDOL - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Nice reading, thanks for another SSD review.btw, on Installation and Early Issues you have a typo:
I headed into the Silicon Image BIOS, asked to recreate the array, specified the entire 233GB
should be 223GB ;-)
Rajinder Gill - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Thanks for point that out, it's fixed.-Raja
TonyB - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
would have been nice to see this thing saturate the PCIe 4x bus on sequentials (1GB/s?). but alas we get a hardly faster if not equal device similar to the Crucial C300 on a sata3 channel.i'll pass thanks.
Phate-13 - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Recently encountered a very interesting ssd, seems like crucial launched a new ssd, 64GB version. And at $150, it's a bargain for it's performance. It's not only cheaper then an Intel Postville per Gigabyte, it's also seems to be faster.http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODUL...
(Didn't know where else to put this tip.)
therealnickdanger - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Wow, that is fantastic! I guess I never even thought to look for a smaller C300 model, but 64GB is really all that I need. @ $150, that's clearly the BEST deal around! Two of those in RAID-0 is $300 and would destroy the Revo or Z!vol7ron - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
You must not read any articles here.In order of occurrence (later to newer):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2909
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2974/crucial-s-reals...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3694/crucial-release...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3704/crucial-realssd...
Phate-13 - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
You must only read the titles of the articles here.1. The 64GB version is new, and a lot cheaper then the 128GB version. The 128GB costs more then double that of the 64GB.
2. If your not trying to point out that it is not new, but the fact that there are problems with it, read the last article:
"The update should go live while I'm out of the country, but it looks like by the end of this month things should finally (hopefully?) be safe for C300 owners. "
It's been two months, so things should be ok by now.
So if you got some information about CURRENT affairs, that would be appreciated, and for the rest, that is interesting reading material for people who are interested in the ssd indeed, but for the rest, I know that already. The only thing I'm interested in right now if there still are those problems.
Qapa - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
Hi Anand,Can you give us an update indicating if everything is working fine by now or if there are still problems?
Of course, more problems can appear later on but just to know if, for now, it seems to be ok...
Thanks,
Qapa
Trisagion - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Can anybody please tell me the <b><i>name</i></b> of that connector above the SI chip? I know it's an expansion slot for a daughter board, but what is it called? It's driving me crazy!