"OCZ RevoDrive looks to shake up SDD market"

[Blacky]

OCZ has introduced the RevoDrive; a new take on the not so humble SSD. The RevoDrive - due for release sometime in July - is essentially a pair of Sandforce equipped SSDs mounted to a PCB in a RAID array. The PCB uses a 4x PCI-E interface which OCZ claims allows the RevoDrive to "move beyond the bottleneck of SATA II".

Claimed speeds are similarly dramatic with read speeds of up to 540MB/s and write speeds of upto 480MB/s - more than double what we saw in our recent SSD group test.

You'd think all this performance would come with a hefty price tag, but OCZ has done a good job of keeping the price down with the 120GB RevoDrive costing £335 - only £25 more than the same capacity Vertex 2

The drive also comes in a 240GB flavour which is priced at a rather more wallet melting £600, but again is within touching distance of the same size Vertex drive.

OCZ even has the ability to increase performance in the future if needs be as the PCI-E to SATA controller chip used actually has the ability to handle four 3Gbps drives; leading to a 4-way RAID array. This will of course increase the price again as each individual drive still requires its own controller chip but we cant help drooling at the possible speeds available if OCZ ever develops a four drive version.

Granted, you could buy two smaller SSDs and set them up in RAID yourself and end up with largely similar performance but the RevoDrive offers a more simple option and a truck load of bragging rights to boot. It also frees up two internal hard disk bays, which could be a key motivation for anyone looking to mod a case extensively.

Source: Bit-Tech

[mstp2009]

It's bootable.

With those write speeds, that price, and bootable, OCZ can put me down for one.

[xman01]

looks damn good
i can imagine the price

[BigDisk]

It uses 2 SandForce SF-1600 controllers in AID-0

Anand has a preview over this:

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

Seems like it doesn't quite hit the advertised speed (but it's still f* awes0me). And there is no TRIM support (yet). It really could become quite an attractive piece of hardware if they can keep the cost down and add TRIM support.

[Blacky]

It uses 2 SandForce SF-1600 controllers in AID-0

Anand has a preview over this:

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

Seems like it doesn't quite hit the advertised speed (but it's still f* awes0me). And there is no TRIM support (yet). It really could become quite an attractive piece of hardware if they can keep the cost down and add TRIM support.

although does others OCZ sandforce drives support TRIM correct? (Vertex 2 & Agility 2)

[Wiggy McShades]

although does others OCZ sandforce drives support TRIM correct? (Vertex 2 & Agility 2)

no trim on this guy or garbage collection. The article claims its a sata to pci-e controller, but in reality it's a pci-e to pci-x converter and the raid controller is pci-x not PCI-E. Also its the SF-1200 controller not SF-1600

my info is from: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3788/o...dable-pcie-ssd

[Cooper]

although does others OCZ sandforce drives support TRIM correct? (Vertex 2 & Agility 2)

Yes. So far TRIM is not supported on RAIDed drives.

[AAbenson]

...i dont get it...why should people prefer these instead of a "normal" SSD
...its not like people have space to waste in their cases...with all the double slot cooler gfx cards,cable management,air flow...etc
.
im very,very happy that every good motherboard these days comes with the ethernet chip integrated so we dont have to have a separate pcie card for the internet connection
...dunno maybe server farms or such...

[Manicdan]

i think this takes up more space than 2 SSDs.

why not do the same exact thing, but make it SATA6gbs, and 3.5" that would shake up the SSD industry too. and fit better too, since most oem machines use mini atx, and dont have that many expansion slots, but almost always have 4-6 HDD racks.

[DeltZ]

mhmm, people who'd want this likely have SLI and won't be able to fit this in lol. But at least they'll have an super extended ATX sized case with empty drive bays.

[geo]

can it boot off the pci-e drive?

[mstp2009]

can it boot off the pci-e drive?

Yes.

[Particle]

The way this thing looks reminds me of those ginormous cache cards of yesterdecade. The hallmark of any still-forming technology is a vast array of some type of chips. In ten years you'll look back and laugh at how this card looks. heh

[WhiteFireDragon]

does this have any real advantage over 2 sandforce drives in RAID0? looks almost the same to me, except the interface. i prefer to plug drives in two SATA slots rather than take up a pci-e slot.

[NKrader]

i want mobo companies to put like 30gb superfast SSD on the mainboard for boot drive

[slaveondope]

Someone let me know when SSD;s are $1/GB and arent so high maintence

[naokaji]

Someone let me know when SSD;s are $1/GB and arent so high maintence

1$ per GB won't happen for a while, but high maintenance? there is absolutely no maintenance involved as long as you get one with Trim and stay away from Raid.

[tdream]

Hold on to your hats, this summer OCZ is going to set the world alight with the new OCZ RevoDrive. It's two ssds smacked together and takes up one of your pci slots. Is it faster than 2 raided ssds... no. Is it cheaper than 2 raided ssds... no. What's the point... it's got a swanky name and saves clutter from building up in your hard drive bay. Ok goodbye...

[Wiggy McShades]

i want mobo companies to put like 30gb superfast SSD on the mainboard for boot drive

One of ocz pci-e SSD's has what looks like laptop memory dimms, except they are MLC flash. Now imagine if the motherboards came with 1-3 slots that supported such dimms so we could maybe add our own 30-60gb of solid state storage on the motherboard.

[turtletrax]

Hold on to your hats, this summer OCZ is going to set the world alight with the new OCZ RevoDrive. It's two ssds smacked together and takes up one of your pci slots. Is it faster than 2 raided ssds... no. Is it cheaper than 2 raided ssds... no. What's the point... it's got a swanky name and saves clutter from building up in your hard drive bay. Ok goodbye...

QFT. If anything wait for the Sandforce SATA6 Gbps interface to lose SATAII bottleneck and not lose a PCI-E slot. Or get a Crucial C300 RAID 0 and be faster....

[saint-francis]

All of those chips make me wonder about latency.

[Coldon]

i think the major benefit of this is that its only supposed to be $20 more than a standard 120GB SSD, and yet offers improved performance over a single SSD.

[zanzabar]

if my agility indi drive were to be replaced or i got a new ssd i think that i would definantly try to rma for one of thees or pick one up. it would be so nice to use more than 1 of the 4 slots on my board and it would get my ssd some ware reasonable as now i have it sitting on top of my dvd that is never used except for windows installs and the occasional dvd rip or burn, this would look awesome and it would be securly mounted (i have no HDD mounts i had to convert 5.25" as the HDD bays were replaced with rads in my p180.)

just imagine how nice it would be for liquid remove all bays get one of thees, an estata storage and usb dvd

[Truckchase!]

I can't believe how pedestrian this thread feels. Is nobody impressed by any effort to provide a definitively faster storage solution than otherwise available in the price bracket? Not very "xtreme"... you can wait for any period of time in this industry and get something faster for cheaper, but this is set to be available in a couple weeks.

I think this looks promising; I'd love to get an update from OCZ as to the likelihood that a TRIM tool will/can be created.

[Russian]

Just curious, what's an SDD