Testing Proceedures and Results
I will be using a pair of systems to test the RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB SSD, the first is a fairly high end system and the second is a rather distinctly low end system. The majority of the testing is going to be done on the high end box, the low end one is included to test how well the RevoDrive 3 can do when it has very little CPU power to back it up. Also because I’ve been trying to get a first place PCMark05 result with the low end CPU for a while and I think the RevoDrive 3 X2 might be just the ticket.
When it comes to installing windows there is an important note: Drivers are required to allow Windows 7 to see the drive. Even more importantly drivers are only available for Windows 7. No official drivers exist for any other OS. An end user has hacked together some Linux drivers, but I have been unable to make them work.
Being a PCIe device some motherboards that only have two PCIe slots will switch to running both slots at 8x, the drop from 16x to 8x will put a handicap on the GPU performance. That said top end GPUs suffer only a 1-4% performance when forced into 8x mode, not bad at all really.
The high end box is comprised of:
- Intel Core i7 2600k CPU.
- Gigabyte P67a-UD4-B3 motherboard.
- 2x2GB G.Skill RipjawsX 2133-7-10-7-1t RAM.
- MSI HD6970 GPU.
- Antec HCP850 PSU.
- OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS 240GB SSD used as an OS/boot drive for the empty tests.
The low end box is quite low end, it contains:
- AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (Orleans) single core CPU.
- Gigabyte 790x-UD4P motherboard.
- 2x512MB sticks of Crucial Ballistix (D9) RAM.
- Sapphire 5830 Xtreme GPU.
- SilverStone Strider 1000W PSU.
- OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD used as OS/boot drive.
On the high end system I will be testing the following benchmarks:
- PCMark05 XP Startup and General Usage.
- ATTO Disk Benchmark, at queue depths of 4 and 10.
- AS SSD Benchmark.
- CrystalDiskMark.
On the low end system I will be running the complete PCMark05 suite as I am trying to improve my current 4th place position with the 3800+ single core CPU.
Ready for results? Me too. The pink bordered results are booting off the Vertex 3 and running the tests on the RevoDrive when it is totally empty. The blue bordered results are booting off the RevoDrive with Windows 7 Pro 64bit installed on it, along with updates and drivers.
PCMark05 XP Startup and General Usage
The PCMark05 results aren’t bad, but they’re definitely lower than I expected, especially with Windows installed.
It is worth noting that PCMark05 is a rather strange benchmark that doesn’t mirror real world results very well at all. I include it for the extreme benchmarking crowd.
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark on the other hand is a modern SSD bench that does a pretty good job of things. It’s results are only comparable to itself of course just like any benchmark.
Overall the RevoDrive 3 X2 gained speed with windows installed and put down some respectable results. CDM only runs a queue depth of 1 (it sends one command at a time) and the RevoDrive 3 is specifically built for higher queue depths as that is when raw performance matters the most.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD is another of the three go-to benchmarks for SSD testing, like CDM it runs a queue depth of 1.
Despite the low queue depth the RevoDrive 3 X2 threw it’s weight around in this benchmark and spit out a very nice score indeed!
