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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nurd - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
The SiI 3124 is just a standard SATA controller; the RAID is software.And not everybody uses drivers written by Silicon Image, or for Windows :)
Nomgle - Monday, July 5, 2010 - link
Erm, that's completely wrong - i suggest you read this review again, and pay careful attention to the RAID-setup screenshots...The Silicon Image 3124 used on this card, IS a RAID controller, and does require drivers.
vol7ron - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
"The PCIe x8 card was made up of four Indilinx barefoot controllers configured in RAID-0, delivering up to four times the performance of a single Indilinx SSD but on a single card."Is this something that you witnessed?
When you have 4 channels of RAID-0, I thought the performance was more exponential. 2 drives/memory chips in parallel may be twice the performance, but 3 drives would be more like 4+ times times the performance.
I think having the daughter board would really change things.
Also, doesn't Intel have a TRIM driver for their RAID controller?
vol7ron
Mr Perfect - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
It should be linear growth, minus overhead.Performance would have to be additive. Three drives can't be four times the performance of one drive. If one drive achieves 55.7MB/s, then you could theoretically get 55.7x3=167.1MB/s from three or 55.7x4=222.8MB/s from four. Considering each drive will only ever be able to put out 55.7MB/s, then how could three achieve 222.8 total? Dividing the 222.8MB/s by 3 would give you 74.2 MB/s output from each drive, when they are physically only capable of 55.7MB/s each. The math would get even wonkier as you scaled higher up the exponential curve.
kmmatney - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
You really need to include SSDs and hard drives in the Benchmarks feature of this website. It would really help for people upgrading from older drives, such as first gen drives, or other drives that you wouldn't be able to inlucde in teh benchamrks for every single review.knowom - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
I'm still waiting on a modern I-Ram priced reasonably with PCI-E bandwidth with a flash card slot for data retention preferably accessible from the PCI-E retention bracket for convenient access and ability to make it hot swappable and DDR3 dimm slots angled diagonally so you could fit more dimm slots and the manufacturer could fit more easily by elongating the PCB like with video cards as well.How a modern I-Ram device would be done ideally
except angled more optimally for capacity in mind
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| | dimm slots |
| Flash | / / / / / / / / |
| | / / / / / / / / |
| ---------------- / / / / / / / / |
| / / / / / / / / |
| PCI-E / / / / / / / / |
--------__________-------------------------------------------
iwodo - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
Until SandForce SATA 3.0 version of Controller comes out. It will be faster then Revo.The Next Mile Stone is 1GB/s, while making it stays the same price........
sunshine - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
Regarding the 64GB Crucial RealSSD C300:This 64 GB version of this SSD, has a much slower write speed than the 256 GB version.
Write speeds vary with capacity:
70MB/s for the 64GB model, 140MB for 128GB and 215MB/s for the 256GB.
So apparently there is a trade off, lower price, but lower speed as well.
lukeevanssi - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
I am thinking of buying a E-revo 1/16 scale. I was wondering how well does this truck drive on grass if i put dual battery packs on it?. Can it climb well on dirt mounds? Thanksif anybody want to know more about it so plz visit this link:-
http://www.healthproductreviewers.com/force-factor...
there is a lot off knowledge about this product
529th - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
My Vertex LE died about 2 weeks ago.