OCZ’s RevoDrive X2: When A Fast PCIe SSD Isn’t Fast Enough

[cangelini]

In a storage market where it's easiest to take one vendor's controller, another vendor's NAND flash, and put the two in a standard 2.5" SATA drive, OCZ continues innovating, giving IT professionals and power users more performance with its RevoDrive X2.

OCZ’s RevoDrive X2: When A Fast PCIe SSD Isn’t Fast Enough : Read more

 

[joelmartinez]

Too much money will get the vertex 3 though or intel

 

[alikum]

If only they could make SSDs cheaper ... Mechanical drives are still the way to go

 

[eklipz330]

although i think sandforce's new controller won't be as fast as they claim, i really think it's gonna change the face of the ssd race by the end of the year

and probably a new iteration of the revodrive as well... can't wait!! =D =D i need me a 160gb for less than $1/gb... that's how much i bought my raptor for like 4 years ago!!

 

[dauthus]

In related news, OCZ stock is up to $6.80 a share, rising 19%+ today.

 

[Guest]

How does this compare to the new Z-drive R3?

 

[cmi86]

Yeah its really cool and i wish i had 1...or 2 lol but it just costs waay too much money, isnt really practical for enthusiast use until the prices drop

 

[dirtmountain]

You routinely use $500 graphic cards (GTX580) and $1,200 displays (2560x1600)in reviews. The price for this upgrade ($650)isn't any harder to stomach then those.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]dirtmountain[/nom]You routinely use $500 graphic cards (GTX580) and $1,200 displays (2560x1600)in reviews. The price for this upgrade ($650)isn't any harder to stomach then those.[/citation]

Aye, but it's a little less tangible than exotic graphics configurations, too.

 

[razor512]

a pci-e ssd seems good, I want one, MS word will run sooo much better

 

[alidan]

i realy wish they would put a 7200 10000 and 15000 drive in there, all top of their respective class, just so we can get some prospective of how much an improvement these are over traditional hdds.

 

[palladin9479]

Something like that is beyond anything any mechanical drive can hope to compete with, its even faster then a multi-channel directly connected SAN array. It looks to be one step away from a RAM Drive, if anyone can remember what those were.

 

[utengineer]

I am waiting to see if Intel's LightPeak tech will be used in the the storage arena(i.e. boot drives, etc). Seems like the SSD tech is evolving so quickly.

 

[christop]

I want one but will have to wait for the price to come way down.

 

[moogleslam]

Do SSD's or the RevoDrive improve gaming performance at all?

 

[krisboro]

Just load times...

 

[syrob]

There is no way to use REVO, Modern Video card AND INTEL RAID ICH10R RAID 10 AT THE SAME TIME, the option rom spoace is used all up.

DO not buy unless you do not ever want RAID through Intel ICHR10 !!!

See link below

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?80739-revodrive-X2-and-intel-ICH10-controller

REVO is not worth it!

 

[studioman22]

Hmm, a little off topic, but what is that Cooler Master UCP-1000W used for the test rig? It's in a strange spot on the CM website, and not in their regular lineup. I guess it's either brand new and not for sale yet? Or is that a legacy product?

 

[K2N hater]

[citation][nom]SYROB[/nom]There is no way to use REVO, Modern Video card AND INTEL RAID ICH10R RAID 10 AT THE SAME TIME, the option rom spoace is used all up.DO not buy unless you do not ever want RAID through Intel ICHR10 !!!See link belowhttp://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/ [...] controllerREVO is not worth it![/citation]
I've read the thread. If you boot from the Revo it's 100% safe to disable ICH RAID. The RAID support present on ICH can be replaced to Windows RAID. As discussed in that thread disabling PXE can also help.

 

[68vistacruiser]

Why would anyone spend hundreds of dollars just to boot up 30 seconds faster, when they spend hours a day on the same computer?

 

[willy_]

What I miss in the review: Is the RAID on the card "invisible" to the OS, as in, the OS sees it as a single drive. Or does the OS need to load a driver for the controller? If that's the case many Linux distri's will not be able to use it as a single drive.

 

[dgingeri]

This is all well and good, but I'm waiting for someone to put 4 SF2200 controllers on a single module with a SFF-8087 6Gb SAS interface for a regular RAID card to utilize. Put 4 boards into a 3.5" form factor container with an interface backplane to split the 4 SAS channels for 4 logical drives. Then use a proper SAS/SATA raid controller to run them in RAID 0,10, or 5 as your use dictates. That will give you the bandwidth you need with a form factor that will be easy to work with. Then we'll need motherboard makers to put 4 of the SATA channels from the southbridge into a single SFF-8087 connection.

Who knows, maybe this could be taken externally with a SFF-8088 connection.

BTW, you mentioned how this compares in price to 4X 60GB VErtex 2 drives in RAID 0, but no benchmarks to compare them to this monster. How come?

 

[syrob]

"""I've read the thread. If you boot from the Revo it's 100% safe to disable ICH RAID. The RAID support present on ICH can be replaced to Windows RAID. As discussed in that thread disabling PXE can also help."""


If you do what you say the Intel Matrix software does not work, and the windows raid is NOT stable, you can remove a drive and no error messages.

READ the WHOLE thread, it spells it out

Best

 

[syrob]

Please read full link/thread to end to understand etc, you kill INTEL ICH10R Matrix RAID capability with REVO...



http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?80739-revodrive-X2-and-intel-ICH10-controller


Best

 

[dgingeri]

[citation][nom]syrob[/nom]Please read full link/thread to end to understand etc, you kill INTEL ICH10R Matrix RAID capability with REVO...http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/ [...] controllerBest[/citation]

Not really a surprise. Adding most raid controllers will kill ICH10R raid or AHCI capability. I tried 3 different highpoint controllers (2300, 2640, and 640) and all of them killed the ICH10R. LSI's MegaRAID 9211 does the same thing. 3Ware's 9650 doesn't, though. That 9650 seems to work with everything.

The fact that they use an internal raid controller and a raid bios tells me that this will have compatibility problems with just about any Intel raid chipset, even ICH8R and ICH9R.