SSD manufacturers can do a little to tweak the performance of the controller, providing some degree of differentiation, but one SandForce drive is much like another.
OCZ, however, is hoping to change all that with its RevoDrive, now official, and pitched as the consumer counterpart to the super-speedy Z-Drive.
Credit: OCZ
Attaching
to the motherboard via a PCIe (gen 1) x4 interface - no SATA here,
folks - the RevoDrive cranks up the speed by using two SandForce
SF-1200 controllers, hooked by a Silicon Image RAID controller, with
RAM provided by IMFT. Bear in mind that internally RAIDing the two
drives prohibits the use of the TRIM command.
Available in capacities of 120GB and 240GB and quoting maximum-throughput speeds of 540MB/s read and 480MB/s write, combining two SF-1200s means that the drive excels in writing to randomised 4K files, peaking at 75,000 IOPS when aligned to a 4K sector boundary, according to OCZ. A 2.5in drive's credentials are usually in the region of 285MB/s read, 275MB/s write, and 50,000 IOPS, by the way.
Sounds expensive, right? OCZ is positioning the 120GB drive at $389.99, plus taxes, and the 240GB for $699.99. Back-of-the-envelope calculations give UK pricing of £310 and £550 for the 120GB and 240GB, respectively, which is consistent with non-RAIDed drives bearing the same controller and of the same capacity.
Here's the lovely Jess from OCZ talking about the RevoDrive at this year's COMPUTEX show.
“The RevoDrive is the first PCIe SSD that delivers both performance and affordability and radically alters the SSD landscape,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “Up to this point PCIe SSDs have been reserved for enterprise applications and priced out of the range of many consumers, the bootable RevoDrive SSD changes the game by delivering a PCIe based solution that costs as low as $3 per gigabyte, exceptional small file write IOPS of over 80K, which is the most available in any low-cost solution.”
Available in capacities of 120GB and 240GB and quoting maximum-throughput speeds of 540MB/s read and 480MB/s write, combining two SF-1200s means that the drive excels in writing to randomised 4K files, peaking at 75,000 IOPS when aligned to a 4K sector boundary, according to OCZ. A 2.5in drive's credentials are usually in the region of 285MB/s read, 275MB/s write, and 50,000 IOPS, by the way.
Sounds expensive, right? OCZ is positioning the 120GB drive at $389.99, plus taxes, and the 240GB for $699.99. Back-of-the-envelope calculations give UK pricing of £310 and £550 for the 120GB and 240GB, respectively, which is consistent with non-RAIDed drives bearing the same controller and of the same capacity.
Here's the lovely Jess from OCZ talking about the RevoDrive at this year's COMPUTEX show.
“The RevoDrive is the first PCIe SSD that delivers both performance and affordability and radically alters the SSD landscape,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “Up to this point PCIe SSDs have been reserved for enterprise applications and priced out of the range of many consumers, the bootable RevoDrive SSD changes the game by delivering a PCIe based solution that costs as low as $3 per gigabyte, exceptional small file write IOPS of over 80K, which is the most available in any low-cost solution.”
