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

[Guest]

Had been looking at Revo, but am totally chucking it in favor of the coming SSDs... from CES reports, we can expect C400 and Vertex 3 within a month or two, with sppeds comparable to Revo... RAID two of those puppies and it will be way sweeter than this one, and likely avoid all the issues that users are reporting.

That last paragraph in the review is pretty much the only meaningful one, IMHO - they should have waited a month to review against the new generation of SSDs.

 

[beachbone]

I will wait till Black Friday deals . Seems so expensive to try my hands on.

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]moogleslam[/nom]Do SSD's or the RevoDrive improve gaming performance at all?[/citation]

Loading times? Greatly.

FPS? It might add a few FPS (like 2-3) depending on the game, if you are lucky.

 

[phate]

Wow it seems to me most "enthusiasts" are missing out. I'm guessing none of you bitching about how expensive these are, or if the "boot time" performance is worth it have actually used a SSD based system regularly.

Upgrading to an SSD is a night and day difference in the everyday operation of your machine. Just doing stuff like launching Firefox takes seemingly forever on an HD based machine now. I cringe at how slow everything is on other peoples computers now. I consider an SSD a requirement on a new computer now, if only for the boot drive.

 

[Makaveli]

Yep anyone sticking with HD as boot drives are either living in denial or too cheap to upgrade.

 

[dioxholster]

HD users living in denial or too cheapo? It doesnt add much to gaming, why waste money on it?

 

[hixbot]

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?

Yeah whats up with that? Or atleast use 2 vertex2s and 2 X25-Ms 120gb in Raid 0 to see if they could close the gap at all.

 

[ammaross]

[citation][nom]hixbot[/nom]Yeah whats up with that? Or atleast use 2 vertex2s and 2 X25-Ms 120gb in Raid 0 to see if they could close the gap at all.[/citation]

Exactly. You cite a list of drives, including:
OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB x 4 240 GB $499 $2.07/GB
Intel X25-M 120 GB x 2 240 GB $478 $1.99/GB

but then use the Vertex 2 120GB in your charts, and the 160GB X25-M... Granted the chart was meant as a price scale, but perhaps you should have stuck to it? Even though this article is about the X2 drive, it is distorting sideline performace views of readers. There are several comments about if the Intel drive is "better." A 120GB SSD2-VTX120 (note the non-"E" branding...) vs the Intel 120GB would have been a better matchup for the "runner ups."

Back to the main complaint: The SSDs were posited as "more expensive" than an SSD RAID setup, therefore 2x120GB Intel drives and 4x60GB Vertex 2 drives should have been included in the charts to demonstrate any performance gain (or loss) in doing things the "hard" way to save a buck. Granted, not all RAID controllers are alike, but Intel's ICH10R controller handles SSDs quite well.

One thing also to note would also be power consumption (not to mention case space) of using 4 drives in RAID vs a single-card solution.

 

[invlem]

[citation][nom]moogleslam[/nom]Do SSD's or the RevoDrive improve gaming performance at all?[/citation]

I have the original 120gb revodrive, quite happy with it, at the time it was the same price as the vertex 2 120gb.

As for gaming performance, having an SSD will improve load times for your games, levels should load quite a bit faster. Actual in-game performance from a frame rate perspective would probably not be affected as much.

and as for compatibility, I'm running a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R. Worked without a hitch didn't have to do any setting changes whatsoever. Just had to set the Revo as the 1st boot device in my bios and I was good to go.

Using the revo drive in the 4th (bottom) PCI-e slot since I'm never going to have 4 video cards in this computer.

 

[invlem]

[citation][nom]willy_[/nom]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.[/citation]

Windows sees my Revo as a single disk drive, not a raid array. During boot you'll see the Silicon Image raid controller with two 55gb drives.

Being as its a hardware (not software) raid setup the OS should not see the individual drives.

 

[road-rash]

Using the Revo with the ICH10R is hit-or-miss depending on the motherboard. I purchased a pair of Revo X2s; 1 for a workstation and one for a server. The workstation (ASUS P6T Deluxe) has a 240GB Revo X2 that happens to also be running 5 WD 500Gb drives in Raid 0 off of the ICH10R with no issues. I did have to set up the REVO with the OS first and then bring up the array, but it does work extremely well.

The server (Asus Z8pe-d18) has the 1Tb model that also runs a raid 60 using an Areca 1260 controller. Again with no issues.

The only problem I've had is that the Revo X2 in the workstation died within the first week of use. The number 4 drive in the array hard failed and couldn't even be recognized. But with an RMA direct from OCZ the machine has been up and running for the last couple of months now with 0 complaints.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]hixbot[/nom]Yeah whats up with that? Or atleast use 2 vertex2s and 2 X25-Ms 120gb in Raid 0 to see if they could close the gap at all.[/citation]

I have a single Vertex 2 here for the time being. Should I get the opportunity to snag a trio of additional drives, you can bet I'll put something together exploring high-end SSD-based configurations!

 

[jaquith]

Me likey RevoDrives!

 

[dEAne]

Too expensive but for me it is not really that worth to buy one.

 

[Alvin Smith]

Would like to see the same article, in September (Redux).

 

[Guest]

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't putting 2 regular Sata3 or 6 Ssd's(E.g 60GB Vertex 2's) in Raid0 mean that Trim support in Win7 doesn't work, and that there is more performance degradation over time? Or can you use a different Raid Controller on the regular Ssd's to stop or reduce degradation.
If that's the case doesn't that mean that the intial value and speed of Raid0 Revo alternative option is short lived? Also if the Revo's are raided then won't they lose speed over time as well?
If this is all true then is my plan of getting a single 240GB Sata 6 Vertex3 for boot and a good collection of games( Inc. Steam) a good one? P.s I'm not rich I just wanted as much long term speed as possible on a budget!

 

[KILLBOT-AU]

Well worth every cent now that I have it running on my asus formula 4.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I spent some time researching PCI-e based solid state drives. There some beasts over in the mainstream enterprise sector. They cost a fortune.

 

[nebun]

[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]
buddy i am using raid and this drive at the same time with no problems..just load the drivers and all is well....there are so many stupid people out there that blame the company for a product which they can't seem to configure correctly. this thing is awesome

 

[lsorense]

"Vista startup is naturally almost all writes."

What a load of crap. That's the most unnatural thing possible. Booting a system should be loading existing software and settings into ram. It should involve no writes whatsoever. You should be able to boot a system from readonly media.

If booting vista involves mostly writes, Microsoft designed it wrong (which unfortunately is probably true). Mostly reads would be natural of booting.

 

[joshua07]

Most important thing to take from this article:

...now seems like a tough time to buy a flagship storage device that could be eclipsed in a very big way a couple of months from now.

 

[Guest]

Intel inschmell .. who cares. Intel reminds me of bloated profit margins and ma bell ..

 

[Guest]

I'm more concerned about the ability to replace NAND flash chips when they wear out. I would go with the PCI-E board for that alone.