OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 review
Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 06/27/2011 01:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]
HD Tach
HD Tach is a physical performance hard drive test that uses a special kernel mode VXD to get maximum accuracy by bypassing the file system.
The HD Tach sequential read test is a little bit different from other benchmarks. Most benchmarks create a file on the hard drive and test within that file. The problem is that modern hard drives use a zone bit recording technique that allows different read speeds depending on where the data is located. Data on the outside of the drive is much faster than data recorded on the inside.
When we look at write performance we see 449 MB/sec in this test, and that's surely okay for this drive.
In addition to sequential read performance, HD Tach tests the drive's random access time. Random access is the true measure of seek speed. Many drives advertise sub 10 millisecond seek speeds, but seek speeds are misleading. Also again, without a physical head that moves around, the SSDs are just so fast as they have no mechanical moving parts. Here obviously, the smaller the number is, the better. In this case, 0.1 ms.
The Burst speed measured in HD Tach was 590 MB/sec by the way. You can check out the test result here.
We review the RevoDrive Hybrid. The idea behind the device hints very much towards Intel's Rapid Storage technology where a HDD is being cached by a Nand flash storage unit. Being OCZ they are making it an enthusiast class performance product. The product we test today for example comes with a 1TB HDD, and a really large 100GB cache partition running over SF2281 controllers. OCZ then applies a mix of their VCA 2.0 technology
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 review
We'll be testing an engineering sample of that RevoDrive 3 X2 today. Let me just throw some numbers at you to get that tickly in your belly ; 1500 MB/s maximum read performance, or what about 1250 MB/s maximum write performance ? No that still didn't do it for you ... well what about 200.000 IOPS (4K writes) ? Yeah that is where we have arrived in the year 2011. It's insanely fast, it will be insanely expensive but it is most definitely insanely sexy.
OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB review
We test the OCZ Revodrive X2, a concept that is close to that IBIS product, but also is not. Will this RAID based SSD solution be faster, slower or equal in performance relative to that IBIS ? Fact remains, today we'll pass 700 MB/sec of storage performance from something slapped onto a PCIe 4x slots and that is just frightening to test, that fast.
OCZ RevoDrive 120GB review
We test and review the OCZ RevoDrive. Pretty much two SSDs slapped onto a PCB, armed with a RAID controller. Pop it in, install the new storage unit and you'll have tremendous performance right of the shelves without the need to configure anything. What OCZ did was done right. They smacked 120GB or alternatively 240 GB of the fastest NAND Flash memory on the PCB, armed that Flash memory with two separate 8-channel SandForce SSD ICs, then bind them to a SIS RAID controller, pop on a PCie x4 bridge and then offer a "PCIe SSD" (if you can call it that) reaching 300,k 400 even 500 MB/sec read and write speeds.
