PCIe SSD Faceoff: Samsung XP941 (128GB & 256GB) and OCZ RevoDrive 350 (480GB) Tested
by Kristian Vättö on September 5, 2014 3:00 PM ESTPerformance vs. Transfer Size
ATTO is a useful tool for quickly benchmarking performance across various transfer sizes. You can get the complete data set in Bench. The ATTO graphs highlight the biggest issue the RevoDrive has. At small transfer sizes the performance is substantially lower than what SATA drives offer and it is only at 128KB where the RevoDrive starts to benefit from PCIe and RAID. It does close to 2GB/s with 8MB transfer size but for users that figure is fairly meaningless because IOs that large are rare.
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thel33ter - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Excellent review as always.Personally I see the performance as being slightly disappointing, but it's just a matter of time till performance akin to the Intel P3700 is going to be within reach of the average consumer.
Probably a silly question, but would it be possible to RAID two PCIe drives?
vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
It is odd that Intel RST is kept from years ago when there are scores and scores of fixes to the drivers since the release you are using. This may dramatically impact test results.I get the desire for bench and legacy scoring, but at a certain point you have to let go of legacy when serious improvements have been made to reliability, errata, bugs, etc, from previous drivers. Not to mention nobody should be using the drivers from this review.
Kristian Vättö - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
We are in the process of upgrading to a new testbed with the latest drivers, but we stumbled into some incompatibilities that have delayed the transition.Remember that storage drivers are not as important as e.g. GPU drivers where one version can have dramatic improvements to one game. After all, the RST drivers are the same for all drives, so driver improvements should affect all drives pretty much equally.
joannecdinkins - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
just as Larry answered I didnt even know that people able to get paid $6104 in a few weeks on the internet .go to this site>>>>> paygazette.ℭＯＭ
coburn_c - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
512GB occupying a desktop pcie slot is still criminal. Works well for mobile devices but we need to get these prices down and these capacities up in the desktop space.Kristian Vättö - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Quite a few of the newer boards already come with M.2 slots, so if you are shopping for a new system you might as well choose a board that has a proper PCIe x4 M.2 slot.Galatian - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
But that limits your choice to essentially Intel Z97 or X99 chipset and from my research on Z97 this actually only leaves the ASRock Extreme6 and 9 as well as the mITX ASUS Maximus Impact VII.KarlKaiser - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Thanks for this article. It is obvious the storage industry is about to change but what I miss as an end-user is helpful comparisons from journalists like yourself that might help me to figure out what to buy now/soon. Keep it up!For example, for another $100 more than the 512GB Samsung XP941, soon we'll get the 400GB Intel DC P3500, which is on paper twice as fast at W/R 2500/1700 MB/s, if a somewhat smaller capacity.
Kristian Vättö - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
The P3500 is something I'll definitely be reviewing (for both, enterprise and client since there's been a ton of interest), but unfortunately we don't have any samples.DMCalloway - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
I agree. The Intel DC P series is the one to watch right now.