OCZ's RevoDrive Preview: An Affordable PCIe SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 25, 2010 2:15 AM ESTInstallation and Early Issues
OCZ doesn’t do anything to hide what’s going on under the hood. The Silicon Image RAID BIOS loads at POST, it’ll even let you enter the BIOS and destroy the RAID array if you’d like. The first time I tried to install Windows on the RevoDrive I actually had to recreate the RAID array. I headed into the Silicon Image BIOS, asked to recreate the array, specified the entire 223GB capacity and hit ok. My sample is a bit early so I don’t expect that all users will have to deal with that, but just be aware that there are no abstraction layers here. You’re working with a pre-configured RAID array.
The RevoDrive is bootable, but you need to supply Windows with the appropriate drivers to recognize the controller. OCZ provided me with a set of 64-bit drivers for the Sil3124 controller and I was on my way. Windows 7 x64 installed without a hitch.
I did notice that I got consistency warnings between reboots however. The OS would run a chkdsk operation, find some issues with files, repair them and let me get on with things. Again, I’m not sure how much of this is due to the early nature of my sample.
The Test
| CPU | Intel Core i7 965 running at 3.2GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled) |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) |
| Chipset: | Intel X58 + Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel IMSM 8.9 |
| Memory: | Qimonda DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 285 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 190.38 64-bit |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows 7 x64 |
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GullLars - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Seconded.The stripe size can have a dramatic impact on performance.
I'd also love to see 4KB random read @ QD 32, but maybe i'll have to wait for some other enthusiast to download CDM 3.0 and post a screenshot...
The sequential read scaling found was horrible, 290MB/s from 2R0 120GB SandForce drives is low. How about an ATTO comparison to show a broader spectrum of sequentials?
Qapa - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
They should make the 240GB version with 4 "drives" in RAID 0, that could make it more interesting... and I guess no one would mind paying twice the value of the 120GB, $740 for a drive that can, at times be almost 4x faster than a Vertex 2.mapesdhs - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Since these are PCIe devices, did you guys try striping more than one of them by any chance?
Heh, looking forward to when we get RamSan-620 speed & capacity on a single card. :D
Ian.
Zstream - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
So how are these supposed to stack against other enterprise hardware companies? With no trim support, this would definitely kill the thought to purchase these.http://www.violin-memory.com/
kurt2000 - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
if it is raided, does it support trim on the raid ctrl ?ggathagan - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Which part of "No TRIM, No Garbage Collection" confused you?RaistlinZ - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
No TRIM is expected.But no garbage collection? Bleh. I'll wait until it at least supports GC. OCZ's reliability on their SSD's has been shoddy lately, which makes me want to hold off even more.
seapeople - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Oh goodie, I can't wait until we have a drive that's 10 times faster than the Intel x25-m and only costs 10 times as much! Maybe after that, we'll get something even faster, for even more money!!Seriously, the problem with SSD's is not that they're too slow, it's that they're too expensive. Drives like this aren't exactly helping in that regard.
MC-Sammer - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
I wonder if there would be any kind of noticeable im[improvement in sped if you put it on an ASUS p6t V2 and overclock the PCIe bus (any board with this function really)Very cool article *thumbs up*
bumble12 - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
$369 for 120GB£316 for 120GB
http://www.scan.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=OCZ+Revo
:(