OCZ Revo Drive

[rjkoneill]

looking at getting one of these as the speeds are amazing and the idea of no sata cables inside my system is too tempting.

i have the usual marketing quotes

The OCZ RevoDrive makes fast, faster with an innovative performance design that pushes the envelope in solid state technology and leaves hard drives in the dust. Moving beyond the bottleneck of SATA-II the RevoDrive features a PCIe interface to deliver superior performance. Designed for high-performance gaming PCs and workstations, the RevoDrive dominates thanks to the unique capability to run both Windows and your essential applications and games. With speeds up to 540MBps and 65,000 IOPS, this bootable PCI-Express SSD not only provides a more responsive PC experience, but promotes cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient conditions compared to traditional mechanical hard drives. The RevoDrive can accommodate a wide range of computing environments such as video-editing and other multi-media creation and management, all while providing the superior durability and reliability of SSDs.

- Capacity: 120GB
- Controller: Dual SandForce SF-1200 (RAID)
- Maximum Read: 540MB/sec
- Maximum Write: 490MB/sec
- Sustained Write: 470MB/sec
- Max I/O Per Second (IOPS): 65000 IOPS (4KB File)
- NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)
- Interface: PCI-Express x4
- Warranty: 3 Years

they are available next week at OcUK where i work, just wondering if anybody has any news on the following

- TRIM? this is the main question
- how will it boot, it shouldnt show up in the bios as it isnt a sata device, will it need drivers
- firmware i know OCZ have good FW support, how often are their updates in general

[Olly_K]

also looking at one of these, now that OcUK have dropped the price a bit. It will probably need drivers, yes. It will boot the same way a scsi card or when you enable raid in the BIOS (press ctrl + I to enter bios etc etc). It's activated after the main bios initialises.

I could be completely wrong though

[SteveRo]

Excellent - please post results! Very curious to see how it does!

[Tony]

as far as I know:

1 no driver needed, its seen as a regular drive

2 no trim (yet) but i doubt its needed

3 FW should be possible as long as the flasher can see past the onboard raid....so the answer is maybe.

4 Next week? i doubt it, marketing samples next week with final shipping a little after

[GullLars]

Looking forward to benches, i have a couple of IOmeter configs i'd like you to run.

Tony, any news on a x4 or x8 SF-1200 revo drive? Are you saving such setups for HSDL drives sometime next year?
BTW, HSDL would be a nice interface for 5,25" (one or more slots) ASAP drives. I'm fantasizing something like nR0 SSDs with one or more RAM DIMMs for read/write cache of hotfiles, possibly a single or 2R1 2,5"(12mm) HDD for "cold files" with external bays, could work awesome.

[BeepBeep2]

Looking forward to benches, i have a couple of IOmeter configs i'd like you to run.

Tony, any news on a x4 or x8 SF-1200 revo drive? Are you saving such setups for HSDL drives sometime next year?
BTW, HSDL would be a nice interface for 5,25" (one or more slots) ASAP drives. I'm fantasizing something like nR0 SSDs with one or more RAM DIMMs for read/write cache of hotfiles, possibly a single or 2R1 2,5"(12mm) HDD for "cold files" with external bays, could work awesome.

- Capacity: 120GB
- Controller: Dual SandForce SF-1200 (RAID)
- Maximum Read: 540MB/sec
- Maximum Write: 490MB/sec
- Sustained Write: 470MB/sec
- Max I/O Per Second (IOPS): 65000 IOPS (4KB File)
- NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)
- Interface: PCI-Express x4
- Warranty: 3 Years

???

[GullLars]

BeepBeep2, yes, the revo drive uses 2x SF-1200 controllers, a ROC (wich?), and a PCIe x4 interface. I was wondering if OCZ had plans for x4 or x8 versions, with a wider bus ofc.

Tony, will you have the opportunity to run an IOmeter config on early models before they hit shelves? I can hardly wait to see if the IOPS scaling at QD 1-16, and particularly the area 2-8, stand up to LSI 9260 with FastPath and 2R0 x25-M or C300.

[Tony]

GullLars

You think like me and Ryan do (Ryan is the CEO) regarding drives, I can say in VERY general terms we are going to push hard to speed things up, BUT it has to be affordable. We can build drag racers now but none of you would buy them as the price would be to high. So....you may see products that take smaller steps from OCZ BUT they are going to be within your price range (best we can)

Initial drive is 4X, not sure on 8X but I can't see why not. I also thought mixing nand controllers may be possible after reading some of the posts here with c300's mixed with LE's etc. Now this does not mean we will use any specific controller...its just the idea caught my eye and i will be suggesting we look at maybe doing something similar.

Regarding Dram cache dimms, i suggested this a good few weeks back, it makes sense to go this route...i think cache on main card and sas link to drive bay ssd combo is the way to go

All this here does not reflect what we are making, it reflects what we may look at making.

[rjkoneill]

can you explain why Trim is not needed on these drives

i had 2 intel 80GB X25 ssds in RAID0 before the RAID/TRIM software update got released and it degraded quite quickly

i now have a single 160gb intel x25 with the obligatory trim etc, no performance loss.

so what exactly would the OCZ offer as a maintainace tool for this drive.

sorry for the questions but its a lot of money to invest in something that doesnt have too many specifics about it at the moment.

we are getting a sample at work shortly but to confirm my queries i would need to use the drive personally for an extended period of time to ensure it is worth bothering with

[F@32]

Preview is up @ Anand http://www.anandtech.com/show/3788/o...ble-pcie-ssd/1

can you explain why Trim is not needed on these drives

so what exactly would the OCZ offer as a maintainace tool for this drive.

Tony I'm sure will elaborate, but according to Anand OCZ is working on TRIM support in driver. Of course it's not known yet when this will be released.

[bigretard21]

PCPer has another solid preview of the Revo drive here: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid...e=expert&pid=1

This drive seems real solid according to all the benchmarks, except on the IOMeter server patterns. Anyone have any thoughts why the Revo struggles to keep pace with Intel on that set of benchmarks, especially at the early queue depths?

Thanks, Chris

[F@32]

I'd like to point out that 2R0 of Crucial RealSSD C300 64Gb at $300 offers awesome value and gives unreleased Revo run for the money.

See thread here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=254451

[rjkoneill]

i had two intels in R0 which were ok but degraded a bit and i wasnt happy
moved over to a single 160gb intel.

wouldnt look at two standard ssds now after that.

thats why i was keen on the revo drive offering something over regular drives. going off the anand review i may as well stick with my intel.

[Unoid]

I want a 120gb right NOW, anyone know a place with in stock?

[dctokyo]

I want a 120gb right NOW, anyone know a place with in stock?

I like the reviews of the drive, very nice, but no way I would buy one now, wait for the 2nd PCB revision.

the first one looks like poor board design or initial QA failure of the unit.

Whats the deal with the soldered jumper wire between the R53 resister and the C11 capacitor?
The PCB should be clean with no wire's like the one in the picture

[Metroid]

can you explain why Trim is not needed on these drives

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3788/o...ble-pcie-ssd/7

[eva2000]

i'd hold off on getting revodrives see http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...d.php?t=892972

The perfomance has dropped off to a pathetic level-lucky to get 150MB/s average. This is poor for a procuct just over 2 weeks old.

My advice is to steer clear of these for the time being.

[Ao1]

I like the reviews of the drive, very nice, but no way I would buy one now, wait for the 2nd PCB revision.

the first one looks like poor board design or initial QA failure of the unit.

Whats the deal with the soldered jumper wire between the R53 resister and the C11 capacitor?
The PCB should be clean with no wire's like the one in the picture

That actually looks quite neat compared to this:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...l=1#post547579

[Computurd]

@Ao1...wow. unbelievable. i am surprised at that tbh. Looks like a noob on his first soldering job hit that up.

[dctokyo]

That actually looks quite neat compared to this:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...l=1#post547579

I can`t believe that OCZ is trying to sell boards like that, they should have recalled the bad boards and waited for the new reversion ones

[Ao1]

Looking at the Anandtech review the mod on the front of the card existed on the sample that they tested back in 6/25/2010, but the mods on the back of the board can’t be seen, so it looks like two further mods were required. It’s quite shocking that OCZ would but something on the markets like that and think it was acceptable.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3788/o...ble-pcie-ssd/1

[tbone8ty]

any updates on whether the OCZ revo has TRIM support? anybody had this drive for awhile see any degradation in performance?

[tbone8ty]

so my buddy is installing the ocz revo 120g on win7, since it doesn't support trim or garbage collection...what services should be turned off?

defrag...what else?

also should the pci-express be overclocked? to 105mhz? or leave it alone

[SteveRo]

I have read that crap cleaner set up properly can help where trim and hdderase cannot be used - i don't have a link but iit should come up n google, your friend could try using that to keep performance on her revo.

[tbone8ty]

ok heres is crystal mark for the 80g revo



this seem ok to you guys?

any idea how to check what firmware version it is running?