We may have had a quick look at these cards while wandering the halls of IDF in September, but now the follow up to OCZ's original RevoDrive is being officially launched.
The RevoDrive X2 manages to increase performance over its predecessor by more than 35 per cent to eye-watering speeds of 730MB/s for sequential read and write operations. Performance for 4k random writes hasn't been changed, but the drives still hit a stunning 120,000 IOPS. Unfortunately the numbers for the two lowest-capacity models - the 100GB and 160GB drives - are a little weaker, with write performance of "only" 690MB/s and 4k random writes limited to 100,000 IOPS
The increase in speed comes from the decision to attach a daughter board to the PCB, adding enough room to double the number of SandForce SF1200 controllers from two to four. These are all linked together in a Raid 0 array that manages to provide a huge amount of bandwidth to get the most out of the banks of flash chips.
The extra physical space also allowed the engineers to increase the maximum capacity of the first generation drives. The X2 will be available in 100GB, 160GB, 240GB, 360GB, 480GB and - for the first time - 960GB varieties.
Like the original RevoDrive, the new models will make use of a 4x PCIe interface and - unlike some other PCIe storage devices - are bootable, allowing them to be used as ultra-fast system disks.
According to the manufacturer, the latest RevoDrives should be available immediately through all of the normal channels. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find any listings yet and have no information on pricing. However, the original models can still be found teetering just above the £2/GB mark, so we'd expect the new drives to arrive at a similar price, if not a little more.
