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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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
:(