First IOXTREME Review

[F.E.A.R.]

Still no place I can purchase in Canada.

But why? CN is a big state

Ok, in germany the ioXtreme isn´t available too, but the ioDrive for ~ 18 month.

[One_Hertz]

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

My humble, horribly degraded, old firmware 2x x25-es on onboard raid do 29k vs your 20k on that test just FYI. The ioxtreme bogs down very visibly when written to so it doesn't seem so quick here. Stuff like game loading is 99.9% reads.

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.

2 Es do 28k here...

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

Because 64k is so large it takes away the random aspect of the equation.

They did not use very good iometer measures; I should have thought about that before posting my last post. The card is all about reads and only reads. It should do south of 100k 4kb random reads. Don't forget that its access time is also 0.08ms. Yours is what, 3 times longer? These things is why it dominates so much in game loading. A card like your LSI will never be able to beat those specs because of the SAS overhead and will never be able to load games faster. The 1231 might be up to the job with acards or x25s in raid.

[Computurd]

@jcool the card only has 512mb of cache so its not much to bench, if in fact that is what we are benching LOL. no matter what anyone posts here there will always be the "what if..." or the "but still..." so what is the point i wonder sometimes?
but its fun!!
test is iops, not cache, its ssd's man, they do operations in the ms range bro. also couldnt you then say the same thing about the i/o extreme? that it is just benching ITS cache? so then does that make the fact that either of them are fast totally worthless and pointless cause it is only CACHE!!!!!!!!
dude gimme a break.
@ one hertz....dude its cool, but you are the one who stated that the lsi is crap, etc. i proved you wrong. get over it. we could argue for years about this.

[jcool]

I was only talking about that Crystal Disk mark being useless, the IOmeter results are fine, and of course unattainable with conventional hard drives. I use SSDs too, ya know.

If you want to bench Crystal Disk mark you gotta chose a test size greater than your raidcon's cache.. or it will perform the same regardless of the drives connected (since 100MB test size will ALWAYS be ran purely in the controller's Dram cache). Even with my 4 drive Raid 5 (!) I get 90MB/s 4k

[F.E.A.R.]

How much IOps (4k - 100% read/write - 100% random - 32 outstanding IOs) i can get with ioXtreme?

[saint-francis]

I want to see some proof that it's all about random 4k read and linear reads are totally useless. Until that time I think that people should tone down the insistence that small random read is king and all else is just for big benchmark numbers.

[One_Hertz]

I want to see some proof that it's all about random 4k read and linear reads are totally useless. Until that time I think that people should tone down the insistence that small random read is king and all else is just for big benchmark numbers.

Just look at the review. A single x25-m (250Mb/s seq read) is faster at loading l4d than the zdrive (~700mb/s seq read). How could that possibly happen? An even better comparison is the new 40gb cheapo Kingston (Intel) drive. It loads games exactly as fast as the x25-m while having 30% less seq read speed and the same small file speed. What does that tell you? The statement that sequential numbers don't matter is fact and has been for a long time. This is also why you can stack as many drives in R0 as you want, but your games will generally load just as fast as a single drive (many members here including myself have confirmed this).

It isn't exactly all about random 4kb reads. It is a mix of random/sequential 4kb-64kb reads. The mix really depends on the games you play.

Anand suggested this:

94% reads
20% 4KB
20% 32KB
40% 64KB.
69% sequential
queue depth 7.76 IOs.

Kind of makes sense. There will be a few writes when saving the game, but it doesn't write at all during loading.


@Computurd - there is no argument. The LSI is indeed crap just like adaptec. Your whole array (6 or 8 vertexes?) is a lot slower than 2x x25-es. It is not that the vertexes are that slow, it is the LSI. I know for a fact that my x25-es are exactly the same as a single x25-m at loading games. A single x25-m will load games faster than your whole array and the ioxtreme is leaps ahead of even that.

[F.E.A.R.]

Yepp - the LSI ist a sequential-monster, but a 4k-baby
Areca´s with IOP341/348 does a better 4k-job

[saint-francis]

How about for anything aside from games? Like boot times and other app load times? Personally I don't play video games and I think that the majority of PC users don't.

And maybe these SCSI controllers will shine when there are SCSI SSD's. The jury is out on that one.

[F.E.A.R.]

I think there´s no big difference with small apps.
We need more detailed reviews with ioXtreme

[Ao1]

And maybe these SCSI controllers will shine when there are SCSI SSD's. The jury is out on that one.

Sorry I know this is a bit off topic but is the Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface (NVMHCI) the way things will go for ssd? I vaguely recall that it has less raw throughput than sata 2.0 but in practice was faster as it preserves parallelism and improves throughput efficiency

[One_Hertz]

How about for anything aside from games? Like boot times and other app load times? Personally I don't play video games and I think that the majority of PC users don't.

And maybe these SCSI controllers will shine when there are SCSI SSD's. The jury is out on that one.

Depends on the app. Small apps will be like games. Apps like photoshop are completely different and are more into large sequential reads/writes. The biggest gains in boot times are done through software changes (nlite/vlite); other than that, it is also 4kb-64kb, but with a bit more writes. I personally don't really care about anything but game loading times... It is absolutely hilarious in L4D versus to load into the game a lot faster than everyone else and rush through half the map as survivors before the other team even loads.

@ FEAR - even better we need someone here to get one. Reviews will always be limited. I'll take a look at my paycheck at the end of the month and I'll see if I can sell a 5870. There is a good chance I'll grab one in 2 weeks or so (I don't have a problem getting one in Canada).

[F.E.A.R.]

Ok, grab one
I look forward to a review here in XS

[NapalmV5]

Here we simply installed Left 4 Dead on each of the drives we've tested and then proceeded to launch single player games on either the No Mercy or Dead Air levels.

thats exactly what i did on my 1231/512mb cache and 4x slc jmicron ssd (c:\)

no mercy initial loadup: 5 seconds
dead air initial loadup: 4.5 seconds
post initial loadup: 2-3 seconds

freakin slow! time to upgrade to faster ssd!

[Jor3lBR]

Time to dump my 4 Super Talents to get one of these...

[Computurd]

Yepp - the LSI ist a sequential-monster, but a 4k-baby
Areca´s with IOP341/348 does a better 4k-job

FEAR you have no idea what you are talking about apparently. i have a areca 1680-ix setting right here, and i can prove that it has #1 a iop 348 processor and #2 that it is nowhere NEAR as fast as lsi in 4k reads. i can begin to post screenies if you desire. that is a ludicrous statement.

@one hertz....it is amazing to me how much of an expert you are at both of these controllers, considering you don't own or have in your possession or have even tested EITHER. just because you have FEAR coming behind you repeating the same thing you say does not make it a fact. do either of you have the aforementioned controllers? have you even used them? what makes you the experts then?
yoiu arrogance and insistence that your single x-25 is faster than my array, or any array, is ridiculous. are you now going to tell us how your single ssd is better than napalms setup as well???
it only shows how your apparently trying to bend reality into supporting the fact that you personally have the end all storage solution. dude get over it.

single x25-m (250Mb/s seq read) is faster at loading l4d than the zdrive (~700mb/s seq read)

the fact that you keep comparing the z-drive to the lsi only shows continued ignorance, can you not read???/ that drive has a 3gb/s controller, with an iop that is massively underpowered. do you understand the difference in speed between these two iops
?
if you guys would stop and look over that review a little bit and actually read what it says you would realize that this is an overpriced solution. it is fast but not THAT fast. you say that they did not run the right tests? is it that, or is it just that it is not that good? you and the little cheering section can go buy one, then we can run these same tests over again,. and argue over it all for the foreseeable future it will be great fun.

[Wendy]

@Computurd
Your wasting your breath, some folks can never see past the wood to see the tree's
All this BS about 4K is all that matters. It fits if you wanna be convinced that one drive is king.
4k is for sure a very important factor, but it's only "the" most important factor if you can use all that 4k bandwidth, and most home users will never even come close to using that bandwidth.
I have proved this, and so has Anand in latest article with real world tests.
NapalmV5 already proved it on this forum too.

ioXtreme is for sure fast, but without being able to boot from it, that's a major drawback, IMO.

[F.E.A.R.]

thats exactly what i did on my 1231/512mb cache and 4x slc jmicron ssd (c:\)

no mercy initial loadup: 5 seconds
dead air initial loadup: 4.5 seconds
post initial loadup: 2-3 seconds

freakin slow! time to upgrade to faster ssd!

Irony

[Spoiler]

@Computurd
Your wasting your breath, some folks can never see past the wood to see the tree's
All this BS about 4K is all that matters. It fits if you wanna be convinced that one drive is king.
4k is for sure a very important factor, but it's only "the" most important factor if you can use all that 4k bandwidth, and most home users will never even come close to using that bandwidth.
I have proved this, and so has Anand in latest article with real world tests.
NapalmV5 already proved it on this forum too.

ioXtreme is for sure fast, but without being able to boot from it, that's a major drawback, IMO.

Agreed with pretty much everything you said except the not-bootable part. That doesn't bother me too much.

[Computurd]

napalm is not being ironic, he beat the i/o extreme's load times. he is being sarcastic.

[NapalmV5]

Irony

whats the problem fear? you got acards/sandforce ssd/1261.. you should be faster than i am

[Computurd]

and there is always napalm to bring people back to earth with his goddamned array LOL!!!!

[One_Hertz]

FEAR you have no idea what you are talking about apparently. i have a areca 1680-ix setting right here, and i can prove that it has #1 a iop 348 processor and #2 that it is nowhere NEAR as fast as lsi in 4k reads. i can begin to post screenies if you desire. that is a ludicrous statement.

We are talking about 1231/1261/1281. The 1680 also sucks for the same reason as the 9260 sucks. They are SAS cards. The 1231 outperforms the 9260 from 2.5 to 6 times @ 4k as shown to us by SteveRO here who tested both cards: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=234374

@one hertz....it is amazing to me how much of an expert you are at both of these controllers, considering you don't own or have in your possession or have even tested EITHER. just because you have FEAR coming behind you repeating the same thing you say does not make it a fact. do either of you have the aforementioned controllers? have you even used them? what makes you the experts then?

I fully trust Steve on his testing. There are other sources that I have looked at as well that show how slow the 9260 is. You showed in this very thread how slow it is. FEAR is not coming in behind me. We are both stating facts.

yoiu arrogance and insistence that your single x-25 is faster than my array, or any array, is ridiculous. are you now going to tell us how your single ssd is better than napalms setup as well???

I dont have an x25-m right now. An x25-m is not faster than any array. It is faster than any array based on a non-sata raid card.

it only shows how your apparently trying to bend reality into supporting the fact that you personally have the end all storage solution. dude get over it.

Nobody is bending anything but you. A few ACARDs + 1231 is probably the fastest storage solution. That or the SLC iodrive.

the fact that you keep comparing the z-drive to the lsi only shows continued ignorance, can you not read???/ that drive has a 3gb/s controller, with an iop that is massively underpowered. do you understand the difference in speed between these two iops?

Oh the irony. If you read carefully (can you not read???) that whole part of the post was not directed at you. I was responding to saint-francis and talking in general terms about the impact of sequential read speed on the loading times of games.

if you guys would stop and look over that review a little bit and actually read what it says you would realize that this is an overpriced solution. it is fast but not THAT fast. you say that they did not run the right tests? is it that, or is it just that it is not that good? you and the little cheering section can go buy one, then we can run these same tests over again,. and argue over it all for the foreseeable future it will be great fun.

Nobody is talking about price here. That is always secondary at XS, especially when comparing high end solutions involving raid cards that all cost a lot to begin with.

They ran a single valuable test, which is measuring the loading time of l4d. I have personally never seen the x25-m get outperformed this much in any review I've ever read. Even ACARDs don't outperform it this much in reviews.

@ Napalm - thanks for the benchmark results; I was actually going to ask you to bench your setup a bit later. We'll see what the ioxtreme can do when paired with proper cpu speed

[Jor3lBR]

thats exactly what i did on my 1231/512mb cache and 4x slc jmicron ssd (c:\)

no mercy initial loadup: 5 seconds
dead air initial loadup: 4.5 seconds
post initial loadup: 2-3 seconds

freakin slow! time to upgrade to faster ssd!

Already asked you to LOAN me your array for 1 day so I can beat Q9650 PCMark05 WR

[F.E.A.R.]

We are talking about 1231/1261/1281. The 1680 also sucks for the same reason as the 9260 sucks. They are SAS cards. The 1231 outperforms the 9260 from 2.5 to 6 times @ 4k as shown to us by SteveRO here who tested both cards: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=234374

Thanks, One_Hertz

@ Computurd

SAS-Controllers only simulate the SATA-Protocoll by software.
We get best perf. with SAS-Drives. (hardware to hardware)

The best controllers (small files) for SATA-Drives are controllers with IOP341