OCZ had launched the last version of their PCI-Express based RevoDrives back in 2011, three years ago. Back then the SSD maker put up to two SandForce SF-2281 controller on one PCI-Express card, which allowed for transfer speeds of more than 1000 Megabyte per second. Today the company launches the successor of this drive and it can host no less than four controllers, which have been bundled using OCZ's proprietary VCA 2.0 architecture.


Article in English

Artikel in Deutsch

Article en français

Articolo in Italiano

Specifications / Delivery

Model	OCZ RevoDrive 350 240 GB	OCZ RevoDrive 350 480 GB	OCZ RevoDrive 350 960 GB
Capacity	240 Gigabyte	480 Gigabyte	960 Gigabyte
Form Factor	PCI-Express	PCI-Express	PCI-Express
Memory	19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND	19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND	19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND
Technology	Toggle	Toggle	Toggle
Controller	2 x SF-2282	4 x SF-2282	4 x SF-2282
Architecture	VCA 2.0	VCA 2.0	VCA 2.0
Capacity single drives	120 GB	120 GB	240 GB
Throughput	1000 MB/s sequential read 950 MB/s sequential write 45'000 IOPS 4K random read 80'000 IOPS 4K random write	1800 MB/s sequential read 1700 MB/s sequential write 90'000 IOPS 4K random read 140'000 IOPS 4K random write	1800 MB/s sequential read 1700 MB/s sequential write 135'000 IOPS 4K random read 140'000 IOPS 4K random write
Accesstime (read)	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms
MTBF	2'000'000 hours	2'000'000 hours	2'000'000 hours
Acoustics	no noise	no noise	no noise
Warranty	3 Years	3 Years	3 Years
MSRP

Architecture

The RevoDrive 350 with 480 Gigabyte NAND flash comes with no less than four SandForce SF-2282 controllers. In principle the RevoDrive 350 is based on four individual SandForce SF-2282 SSD with 120 Gigabyte. Compared to the predecessor it features the same architecture, where there is no SATA-to-PCI-X-to-PCIe chain but a single SATA-to-PCI-e-84 bridge chip on the PCB. This means that the four SF-2282 controllers get a full 4 Gigabyte per second of raw bandwidth. Compared to the predecessor bandwidth has been doubled since the PCI Express Gen 2.0 x8 interface is twice as wide.

Basically the RevoDrive 350's PCB is being equipped with up to four individual SSDs. It's rather interesting to have a closer look at the drive size of these individual units, since it to see relations between drive size and peak performance. In case of the RevoDrive 350 240 Gigabyte there are two controllers so the units must offer 120 Gigabyte capacity each. As for the RevoDrive 350 480 Gigabyte there are four controllers and therefore drive size is also 120 Gigabyte per piece. With the RevoDrive 350 960 Gigabyte things are a little bit different. There are also four controllers, which means drive size is 240 Gigabyte per unit. As proven several times in different SSD reviews 240 Gigabyte drives offer superior performance to 120 Gigabyte, which explains the substantially higher IOPS values communicated by OCZ in case of the 960 Gigabyte drive.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 6 - Random write KByte/s
Page 2 - Impressions	Page 7 - Random read KByte/s
Page 3 - How do we test?	Page 8 - Random write IOPS
Page 4 - Sequential write KByte/s	Page 9 - Random read IOPS
Page 5 - Sequential read KByte/s	Page 10 - Conclusion