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| Review: OCZ RevoDrive 50Gb SSD PCI-Express Card |
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| Posted by Will Smith | ||
| Thursday, 09 September 2010 23:03 | ||
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Introduction In the past, we've reviewed many OCZ products from memory modules to power supplies, and each time their products have exceeded our expectations in terms of performance and features. Having already made a name for itself, in producing some of the world's best memory for overclocking and extreme systems, OCZ technology have now turned their attention in producing high performance SSDs (solid state drive). It's a natural progression for OCZ, as the technology behind SSDs are very similar to some of their memort products. With prices of NAND Flash memory falling over the past year, it has benefited many manufacturers including OCZ, and thus making the SSD market more accessible to the general public. I remember only couple of years ago, a 32Gb or 60Gb SSD used to be extremely expensive and was out of reach for a lot of users. Only high-end users and extreme enthusiasts were able to afford them. But now we're seeing affordable 128Gb SSDs (as well as some 256Gb versions) from manufacturers like Adata, Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Partiot, Super Talent and of course OCZ ... but the list goes on quite a bit.
Last month, we reviewed the ADATA S596 Turbo 128Gb SSD. It's a standalone solid state drive which uses JMicron's new JMF-616 controller. We thought it was a great product that offered excellent performance and features. But thanks to Microworks and our review team, we managed to get hold of a solid state drive that's in the form of a PCI-Express card. It's one of the world's first ever SSD PCI-E card and it's made by OCZ Techology. For those who are not familiar with OCZ Technology or their products, here's something taken from their website ...
In this review, we'll be taking a look at the OCZ RevoDrive 50Gb SSD PCI-Express Card. It's one of only a few solid state drives on the market that's in the form of a PCI-Express card, and is aimed at the higher-end and enthusiast market. The card features internal RAID 0 powered by Silicon Image Sil 3124 controller, and has a total capacity of 46Gb (usuable) driven by 2 SandForce controllers. It can be used as primary boot drive or for data storage. What makes this card extremely appealing is the internal RAID 0 feature. RAID 0 is also know as data "striping" and allows a massive boost in performance. For more information about RAID technology and data striping click here. Basically, it's 2 x 23Gb solid state drives on a single PCB configured in RAID 0 format, this in effect gives you a total of 46Gb and literally doubling the performance. Sounds amazing ... can this be true, double the performance of a single SSD? Our review team will find out. If the OCZ RevoDrive is what it's all cracked up to be, then we could be seeing something that will offer phenomenal performance in terms of data transfer speed for both read and write. I'm expecting mind-blowing performance and data transfer speeds that has got to be seen to believe. With two SandForce controllers managing 23Gb each, all in a single PCIe card configured to RAID 0 ... it's hard to imagine what this card can really do. It'll be interesting to see how well it performs with other standalone SSDs on the market. With such a high performance SSD product, we don't expect it to be cheap. They say that love is blind ... is price blind too for the extreme enthusiast who's after performance that's out of this world?
We'll be testing the OCZ RevoDrive 50Gb SSD PCI-Express Card on our test rig which consist of an Intel Core i5 - 650 @ 3.2Ghz cooled by a Noctua NH-C12P SE14 CPU cooler, a Gigabyte P55 USB3 motherboard, a Geforce GTX 460 OC, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer and a Silverpower 650w power supply. It's the same system we've used in our other SSD tests. Right, let's not waste any more time and check out the specifications in our next page ... |
