A Quick Look at OCZ's RevoDrive x2: IBIS Performance without HSDL
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 4, 2010 1:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
- RevoDrive
- RevoDrive x2
The Test
Note our AnandTech Storage Bench doesn't always play well with RAIDed drives and thus we weren't able to run it on the RevoDrive x2.
| CPU | Intel Core i7 975 running at 3.33GHz (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 |
PCMark Vantage & SYSMark 2007 Performance
With a four controller SF-1200 setup the real performance advantage won't be seen on most desktop workloads. The RevoDrive x2 is only a few percent faster overall than the original RevoDrive and about 10% faster than a single OCZ Vertex 2.
In the HDD suite the performance advantage is much greater. The RevoDrive x2 is also a bit quicker than the IBIS, perhaps because of the lack of overhead posed by the HSDL interface. There's a 31% performance improvement over the original RevoDrive.
SYSMark shows that most CPU bound desktop workloads won't be impacted by the RevoDrive x2. If your applications are IO bound, expect to see an impact but otherwise there's not much to gain here.
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disappointed1 - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
Of course, DMI itself is "a (perhaps modified) PCI-E x4 v1.1 interface"disappointed1 - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
oops, Intel block diagrams depict that as 2GB/sStuka87 - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
That bandwidth isn't dedicated to the drives though. Its shared with other devices.leexgx - Friday, November 5, 2010 - link
intel ICH max's out at around 700-800MB/s with RAID 0 more ssds does not add muh more data rate {adds maybe 20-50MB/s per extra ssd}(random access speed mite be higher), it has been testedGooger - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
Fusion IO seems to have the right idea by (according to them) getting rid of the raid controller (aka the middle man) and feeding the data directly to the bus. Perhaps it's time OCz and others start looking at their approach to things.http://www.fusionio.com/
disappointed1 - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
They're not bootable and cost thousands of dollars - totally different market segment.disappointed1 - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
Thanks for a more straightforward review Anand. Since this is largely the same as the previously-reviewed IBIS, I think in addition to rehashing those benchmarks, it would be more interesting to get hard data on your claim that..."The reality for OCZ however is there’s no performance benefit to purchasing a RevoDrive x2 over four Vertex 2s and creating your own RAID array"
I'd love to see what 4x SF-1200 drives do on an ICH10R, or a discreet RAID card running off the IOH.
RealMurphy - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
* Drive is able to sustain massive read bandwidth - check* Drive is able to sustain massive write bandwidth - check
* a lot of IOps - check
* but why the heck PCI-X? Unless I'm totally mistaken and this is one of the few PCI-X 2.0 devices, you have NO error correction what so ever on this path and only puny even parity checking which will eventually fail and let's you read/write junk :( (caveat, maybe I misinterpret the PCI(-X) specs, if so please correct me)...
Powerlurker - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
Supposedly, it's because OCZ realized that a PCI-X controller plus PCI-X to PCIe bridge cost significantly less then a native PCIe RAID controller.ypsylon - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
Bad investment and misguided. You can easily achieve these results with basic software RAID card (like Highpoint Rocket RAID 6xx) and 4 cheap SSDs. And if you buy proper RAID controller (say Areca 1261ML) and plug anything between 4 and 16 small SSDs in RAID 0 or 10 you will simply trounce Revo in every possible way. While it is more expansive short term, you can always freely expand storage space with bigger SSDs without too much hassle. You can't do that with Revo.Honestly SSDs are still a premium product. And for a premium product Revo is not good enough. I would certainly buy Photofast GM-Powerdrive, not Revo. Of course it is more expansive (2.5x) but it offers twice the performance (PCI-Ex x8 not x4 like in RevoDrive), and full hardware RAID support from R0 to 60 (not some software rubbish from SilImg, brrr).
I like the idea of the FusionIO, but it is not for normal PC users. It is fine investment tho if you own gold mine, oil derrick, first name is $heikh, you are footballer, work for a mafia, or you are a banker. Take your pick! ;)