OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid review

Memory (DDR4/DDR5) and Storage (SSD/NVMe) 367 Page 19 of 19 Published by

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Final words and conclusion

 

Final words and conclusion

So then, the RevoDrive Hybrid is a promising technology. You do need to be aware of the upsides and the one downside of it. Let's deal with that first, the overall initial write performance (1st write to HDD) is not what I had hoped to be and that could be a rather significant factor for many of you. Where the product shines though is of course the overall experience -- combining the good from the HDD with the good from the SSD.

Most of your applications can be cached, and once cached the Hybrid storage unit kicks that booty. Literally that means the operating system is seriously fast as well as all the applications stored on it. Once cached, the read performance of the RevoDrive Hybrid is phenomenal, outstanding really with near silly performance.

The flip-side of the coin is 'initial' read and write (1st load) performance. Your read performance is tremendous after the data is cached, but we did notice only a few situations where write performance kicked in nicely as well. Overall, you are writing 1:1 towards a 5400 RPM 2.5" laptop HDD. And that's your bottleneck right there. We are a little surprised to see a 5400RPM  Toshiba 2.5" HDD on the RevoDrive Hybrid, that to me is a choice I do not understand other then saving overall costs for OCZ. Our 'choke' file copy tests have proven that point quite well, a true data traffic jam if you will was the result. I would really have loved to see a faster 7200 RPM HDD on the RevoDrive Hybrid. But perhaps something to think about for the next generation.

To translate that, if you need write hundreds of MP3 files age on an modern age SSD this will take you say ten seconds, on this device that same workload takes two maybe three times as long much.

But yeah, a cache is a cache -- everything need to be read and processed once, when it is stored onto the SSD cache and then when you load it the 2nd time, there it'll speed up. The good thing is that even after reboots the Dataplex cache software will still remember and cache your content. So that PC boot time speeds up significantly as well as the applications you use so often.

  OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid

Where the RevoDrive Hybrid surprisingly well is the operating system. That entire infrastructure of loading the same old DLLs etc over and over again is being cached, the Windows experience as such much faster then when you work with it from a HDD.

Then applications that you load up often get that same performance treatment, as anything from Photoshop to Microsoft Office to your FTP client and browser get a massive kick in the proverbial cyber nuts once they have been cached on that seriously fast SSD partition. It's exactly there where performance matters for your overall experience.

There's another category that will greatly benefit from this Hybrid solution, gamers. The large storage partition will allow you to get your games cached and that helps out greatly by load times of the game and the levels in-between them. Once you get tired of the game and do not play it so often anymore then over time it will be written off the SSD and load from HDD, which is clever really. Just think a second about your Steam directory being cached and the effect of that.

Pricing then, the product as tested today will cost you 499 USD (450 EUR), and that's a lot of money. OCZ opted to get one of the fastest SSD partitions on the RevoDrive Hybrid to offer you the fastest cache on the globe, that also translates into it's price as expensive components are used and needed.

The price will be a dilemma though. If you purchase a 120GB OCZ Agility 3 then for $149.99 with Rebate you still have 350 USD left for HDD storage. I just checked and a 1 TB HDD will cost you 55 USD, so you can add 6 TB on drives and you will still not have reached 500 USD. Meanwhile if you place your entire OS + apps on the SSD you will not have that 'writing' to HDD bottleneck I've been talking to you about. You do need SATA3 support on your motherboard and get more wiring / cabling / installation etc.

It's this predicament and reality that OCZ has to fight off with with the RevoDrive Hybrid. Realistically, once cached the read performance downplays an Agility 3 or any SATA3  SSD performance big-time as the Hybrid solution is so frickin fast, but sure, the data does need to be cached first.

Please do remember that the RevoDrive Hybrid MUST function as a boot partition with Windows on it. You can not install it seperately next to another HDD/SSD that has Windows (boot drive) running, as the Dataplaex cache layer can only cache the boot partition. Concluding then, as much as I like the technology and innovation here I do have a tiny bit of mixed feelings about the RevoDrive Hybrid.

As much as I adore the idea and tech behind it if I had to choose spending 500 USD / 450 EUR on this unit or simply go for a large SATA3 SSD and a separate TB HDD, I'd probably choose the latter. Obviously that just an opinion, you might think and feel differently for many reasons and that's your God-given right. From a technology innovation point of view we nearly envy what OCZ has done here. It is a smooth symbiosis of just the right hardware and software. And for those that compare it with Intel's SRT, make no mistake -- this solution is so much faster, just look at the overall cached read performance sometimes peaking towards 800 MB/sec. Then again Intel's SRT might be a much cheaper alternative.

It's fantastic performance for the OS and the applications that you need to load up often (repetitive data). However for your random write performance things look somewhat more complicated, that is the price you pay for a cache solution. The overall experience however is incredibly snappy and fast, it is a storage unit that offers you a super fast overall OS experience with very swift and snappy loading applications, but sure with average to slow 1st time writes. guru3d-recommended_150px.jpg

The OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB can be spotted for 450 EUR / 499 USD and is covered by a 3-year carry-in warranty. We can very much recommend it.

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