FRONTPAGE OCZ Revodrive X2 SSD Review

[Overclockers.com]

The OCZ Revodrive X2 isn't your grandmother's old hard drive. This thing uses a PCI-e slot with x4 bandwidth mode for extreme speeds in both write and read. OCZ sent over a 240 GB model that can read at up to 740 MB/s, write up to 720 MB/s, and perform up to 120,000 IOPS which are astounding numbers, especially compared to mechanical drives.

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[Owenator]

Very nice review!

Did you have to use the Intel RAID controller built into the Sandy Bridge CPU?

You can send it over to me whenever you are ready!

 

[Janus67]

super /drool

 

[splat]

no the drive has a raid controller built into it, i believe its a silicon image controller

 

[dfonda]

Nice review! No Linux support then?

 

[kraven]

Very fine write up. Question: was the 2600k OC'd at all?

 

[splat]

these results are all at stock speed. and actually, running overclocked doesn't really change the results.

 

[deeppow]

Very nice job!!

But I do have one problem (well maybe two) with such awesome performance the Revodrive produces, I can neither type nor think that fast.

 

[macklin01]

Beautiful piece of hardware. Simply amazing.

It's too bad in a way that these don't come with at least some rudimentary non-RAID backup boot mode.

Any news on the linux support? I thought that was a great question.

 

[bcsizemo]

I assume the raid setup has to do more with the OS being able to access the drive at multiple points? Sort of like hyper threading.

My only concern would be a power failure and how the drive would handle that. Or how your data would be handle per se...

 

[macklin01]

My only concern would be a power failure and how the drive would handle that. Or how your data would be handle per se...

Hopefully no worse than power failure for rotational drives. I would think probably better, since write times are faster, so hopefully there would be fewer pending write operations at power loss (and hence better file system consistency).

 

[splat]

Finally got around to testing this with Linux, and it works perfectly (using Overclockix LiveCD)

edit: i'm now trying to install linux (ubuntu 11.04) but i am running into errors getting grub installed (seems to be common). i'll report back if i get it working.

 

[Killahurtz]

lightening

Mine installed like a dream...and performs like it's arse is on fire

I would add to one observation in the reply posts...overclocking the pci-e bus definitely has an affect on performance, for the better...you can find other posters showing results up to 120 mHz bus and the results are quite insane

100 mHz bus speed


105 mHz bus speed


Sabertooth P67 / 2600K @ 5000 / Revodrive X2 240 / Dominator GT 1600-7-7-7-20 1T

 

[EarthDog]

I wonder if turnign up PCIe frequency giving better numbers is b/c its in a 1x slot and turning it up helps vs a 4x slot that has more bandwidth aready?

I also dont see where he mentioned PCIe overclocking didnt do anything.. i will reread..

 

[Killahurtz]

no offense

no offense intended, I thought posting some info that may give more insight into the product might be ok...mine is in a 4x slot , as it will not fit in a 1x slot

*I should said have the reference to overclocking was in the comments

 

[EarthDog]

None taken. There is nothing wrong with your post. I was just theorizing why you are seeing these gains is all.

Your oringal (now edited) wording, "I would correct one observation in the review", means it was mentioned in there, and I thought I missed it.
Its GREAT additional infromation for the article to something that wasnt mentioned (unless I still missed it).

The 4x slot could be running as a 1x slot though, I believe that was mentioned in the article, no? Again, just guessing as to why you are seeing those results for something that is theoretically not bandwidth limited in a 4x slot. it looks like your results are on par with the what the card is rated for and not really pushing the card past what its rated to do.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the drive is designed to use a x4 PCI-e slot. On a board that has three PCI-e slots, the last one might default to an x1 speed, like the Asus P8P67 Pro does. You might be able to override this in the BIOS and force it to x4 mode in case your other two slots are taken up by GPUs. Otherwise, the card will work fine at x1 mode, which is still pretty fast but not optimal.

 

[Killahurtz]

this board (sabertooth P67) has 2 PCie x16 slots that drop to x8 when both are filled, my revodrive is in the first x16 slot and the GPU is in the second, GPUZ shows the vid card at x8 , I am pretty sure the revodrive would have to be operating at x4 for it to get the numbers shown at 100 mHz bus

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6840694

 

[EarthDog]

I saw that thread in the past and it doesn not answer any of my theories/questions as I dont not believe he specifies what slot speed it is..

EDIT: He says its 4x... but he is in Xfire so... may be 1x if 3rd slot.......

 

[splat]

i didn't test on xfire. when i said overclocking didn't help, i meant simply upping the multi on the processor. i didn't test changing the fsb but i can see by your post that does help, and that would make sense as fsb affects more than just cpu speed.

 

[EarthDog]

PCIe frequency, not FSB/bclk.

We also were not referring to the review when i said he tested in Crossfire, I was refering to the link he provided which was on Crossfire.