First IOXTREME Review

[One_Hertz]

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Fusi...Review/?page=1

EPIC WIN. Almost the performance of the SLC iodrive for just $900. If I didn't just blow all my money on a nice plasma screen then I would be ordering this right now and throwing my second 5870 out the window.

Basically the best way to get away from the performance equivalent of an X25-M is this thing.

[lowfat]

If it had more than 3 months of warranty I would purchase one in a heartbeat.

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

I love the speed, but I'm not xtreme enough for it apparently. Neither is my wallet. :p

Looking good. Glad prices are coming down. That'll probably be my next ssd upgrade after my OCZ agility gets slow/old and the cost of iofusion is affordable. I really need to hide my credit card, I haven't even gotten my first SSD yet (its waiting to get my house as I type this) and I"m looking at this stuff.

Prices in 1 year might actually be affordable for most people!

[Ao1]

That is the first time I have seen Intel at the bottom of benchmark scores. It's a shame it can't boot. That right there is a show stopper for me, but other than that it is very appealing. The first properly designed ssd/pcie solution imo.

[alfaunits]

Get any drive that holds the NTLDR, and have the actual installation on IOXtreme..
I think that's possible - otherwise someone (or all) at FusionIo are reeeeaaaaly stupid. (they made imba controller logic, I doubt they can't make a driver right)

[XS Janus]

B R U T A L

is the only word that comes to mind...

[lowfat]

Looks like the warranty is now listed as 3 years

Still no place I can purchase in Canada.

[Computurd]

Its fast, but there is faster out there, get a lsi 9260-8i and a few ssds you can blow that thing away. they are comparing it to a z-drive? lol the zdrive sucks. basically a rocketraid 3520 and four ssd's. the reason it blows so bad is the controller they have it hardwired to. (the z-drive that is). IOEXTREME small file performance is nice, but for it to not be bootable and at 11 bucks GB that is unrealistically high priced, at least for me.

[alfaunits]

Blow it away? Who needs 2GB/s sustained speeds vs 800MB/s when you got only 80GB of space? You buy this thing for random I/O, period.

Now, whether you need that much random I/O or whether a single X25-M or even a VelociRaptor is enough - that's a different question.

[RealTelstar]

Pointless since it doesnt boot. I wonder with w7 boot partition if the OS can still be installed there.

[zalbard]

I love the speed, but I'm not xtreme enough for it apparently. Neither is my wallet. :p

Sad but true! Same here...

Prices in 1 year might actually be affordable for most people!

Yeah, no breakfasts for a year and I might afford it!

But damn, this thing is insanely fast. Wonder if you can see the difference in daily use, though.

[One_Hertz]

Its fast, but there is faster out there, get a lsi 9260-8i and a few ssds you can blow that thing away.

The other way around. You can stack as many SSDs as you want in RAID and this thing will still blow them all away quite badly. The Zdrive uses some sort of LSI card btw not rocketraid and a single x25-m is faster than that. The 9260-8i seems to have similar performance to the card on the Zdrive.

[SteveRo]

The other way around. You can stack as many SSDs as you want in RAID and this thing will still blow them all away quite badly. The Zdrive uses some sort of LSI card btw not rocketraid and a single x25-m is faster than that. The 9260-8i seems to have similar performance to the card on the Zdrive.

Not bootable is a show stopper for me.
Also - while this is less $ - it is still not as fast as an areca 1231ML with a couple acards (4xR0).
Of course a major downer for the 1231ML/acard solution - only 28GB (formatted) if using 2GB sticks.
4gb ddr2 sticks are still just too much.

I have gotten somewhat proficient vliting w7!

[[XC] gomeler]

The IOMeter results are impressive, wish they had done more access patterns with large variety of reads/writes than just the workstation pattern. Impressive, a damn shame it costs $900.

[One_Hertz]

Also - while this is less $ - it is still not as fast as an areca 1231ML with a couple acards (4xR0).

I actually think the ioxtreme may be faster @ reads than that setup due to limits of the 1231, but you are welcome to do some tests against the ones ran in the review.

[SteveRo]

I actually think the ioxtreme may be faster @ reads than that setup due to limits of the 1231, but you are welcome to do some tests against the ones ran in the review.

When I get a chance I'll run iometer with their w/s settings and we can compare.

[Computurd]

well i will have to disagree with that quite vehemently, the statement that
1. the lsi is akin to a z-drive...not even close. and 2. that the i/o extreme outclasses the lsi.

first two are the i/o extreme, one is solo, the other in raid:


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW my setup with LSI 9260-8i:




and the thing is those are with vertex, there is not a drive out there yet that can push the lsi to its full specification. there is still much upward performance to be gained from this card, given the right drives. remember it tops out at 2.8 gb/s read. I dont think it is possible to say unequivocally that the i/o extreme outclasses it given the fact that 6gb/s ssd's havent even came to fruition yet.

[Computurd]

the first revision of the z-card used the highpoint rocketraid 3520 http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=911
^^that was the card i was referring to when you mentioned the z-drive.
the newer version of the z-drive uses the SuperMicro 3Gb/s Eight-Port SAS Internal RAID Adapter, which features the LSISAS 1068E 8-port PCI-E SAS controller.
this is a 3gb/s card.
this card does not even begin to match the specifications or speed of the 9260-8i. you are comparing a 3gb/s card to a 6gb/s card. the LSI controller on the newer z-drive is very very similar to the 3520 on the original z-drive, which is to say it is woefully underpowered for the application it is being used for.

[One_Hertz]

^^^

Sequential rates don't mean much, if anything. Everything you have posted is irrelevant. Run iometer @ the setting done on the review and see for yourself how you will get outperformed a few times over by a single ioxtreme. That LSI is complete crap at everything but large files. I think Steve maxed it out and only got like 20k 4kb random reads? That is less than a single x25 drive. The real world performance will mirror that.

[Computurd]

far from being irrelevant my friend
in the course of that review they talk of the fact that the i/o extreme was tested in formatted and non formatted setups, because the difference of a formatted drive in speeds of course is slower, so we shall use their own IOP/s info on the formatted drives.. the i/o "extreme" 80 gb results, as that is the single pcie slot solution, ie single device.


now look at the exact same setup i just ran with win7 installed, firefox browser going at the same time, normal 24/7 setup on my computer. i ran this moments ago. My iops beat the single i/o extreme solution, 80 percent read 80 percent random 8k file transfer, the exact same settings.

[Computurd]

another test, same settings with the i/o v lsi 8k 64 read 100 random. lets see a single x-25m do that.

[Computurd]

i believe in this test i even beat the raided i/o extremes specs...

[F.E.A.R.]

Who knows about block-fragmentation with ioDrive and ioXtreme? http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.p...eb591bf4bcc5cb
Are these drives now bootable?


btw:

A old benchmark (IOmeter 2006) with 2x Acard 9010 and Workstation 8k
I must run a repetition with IOmeter 2008 soon.

[HuffPCair]

If this thing didn't cost as much as buying a good hooker for the night it would be a hell of a deal. Plus whats with the warranty???? That is a company that believes in its products for sure.

[jcool]

NOW my setup with LSI 9260-8i:

Congratulations, you just benched your raid controller's cache

I can get similar numbers for my HDD Raid 5 array on an Adaptec 5805, still doesn't mean anything.

OT: if it can't boot, it fails. At least in my book.