OCZ PCI-Express SSD Special
Category : Storage
Published by Marc Büchel on 05.12.12
Since quite some time OCZ has the RevoDrives in its portfolio. These drives feature a PCI-Express interface and they are able to deliver sequential throughputs at 1 Gigabyte per second and above. In this article we're going to show these two expansion cards, check how fast they really and tell you for which group of buyers they're relevant. 
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If you take a closer look at the portfolio of SSD manufacturer OCZ, you'll find quite a few consumer grade drives as well as enterprise level SSDs (Z-Drives) and PCI Express expansion cards. Furthermore there is one category which is especially interesting if you want to build a consumer grade workstation PC. Since quite some time OCZ offers their RevoDrives, which are based on a multi controller architecture and they offer a level of performance which is simply impressing. Basically the difference between the RevoDrive 3 and the RevoDrive 3 X2 is the fact that the first one comes with two SandForce SF-2281 controllers and the second one features a total of four controller. Far more than one year ago SandForce was able to raise the performance bar when the first SSDs were introduced, which were using these controller. On the RevoDrive 3 these controllers communicate via a SAS bridge chip. In order to reduce performance degradation over time to a minimum OCZ implemented a TRIM for a RAID configuration and nowadays with Windows 8 this implementation is fully supported.
Area of Application and Performance
OCZ's RevoDrive 3 X2 is their fastest PCI Express card we're having a look at today. According to the manufacturer sequential throughput rates of more than 1 Gigabyte per second can be reached using this drive, which we've been able to confirm during our tests. Although those drives are available since more than a year, single controller drives are still not capable of reaching such speeds by quite a margin. Therefore the RevoDrive 3 X2 can be recommended for workloads which benefit from exceptionally high throughput rates. So far we haven't been talking about the IOPS: in this case we have to say they are on an impressing level too. For random reads we measured almost 190'000 IOPS at 4k block size which is amazingly fast. Especially in multimedia workstations this expansion card will be able to accelerate processes.
Specifications |
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| Capacities | 240 GB, 480 GB, 960 GB | |
| Interface | PCI Express 2.0 x4 | |
| NAND Flash | MLC | |
| Form Factor | Full height | |
| Boot Device | Yes | |
| 240 GB Performance | Read: up to 1500 MB/s Write: up to 1225 MB/s IOPS: up to 200'000 at 4K |
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| 480 GB Performance | Read: up to 1500 MB/s Write: up to 1250 MB/s IOPS: up to 230'000 at 4K |
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| 960 GB Performance | Read: up to 1500 MB/s Write: up to 1300 MB/s IOPS: up to 230'000 at 4K |
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Prices |
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| Toppreise.ch | Geizhals.at | |
| RevoDrive 3 X2 240 GB | CHF 494.45 | EUR 454.78 |
| RevoDrive 3 X2 480 GB | CHF 732.65 | EUR 671.75 |
| RevoDrive 3 X2 960 GB | CHF 1'173.30 | EUR 1'110.77 |
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 - Performance |
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| If you want to compare performance values of the OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 with more than 50 other SSD's we recommend to have a look at our SSD Charts: SSD Charts: 52 SSDs | |
| Sequential write | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 1'128'777 KB/s |
| 16k | 1'267'387 KB/s |
| 32k | 1'290'256 KB/s |
| 64k | 1'291'447 KB/s |
| 128k | 1'288'648 KB/s |
| 256k | 1'291'486 KB/s |
| Sequential Read | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 804'525 KB/s |
| 16k | 1'168'743 KB/s |
| 32k | 1'236'022 KB/s |
| 64k | 1'345'655 KB/s |
| 128k | 1'438'453 KB/s |
| 256k | 1'460'560 KB/s |
| Random write IOPS | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 189'164 KB/s |
| 16k | 79'284 KB/s |
| 64k | 14'203 KB/s |
| 96k | 11'902 KB/s |
| 128k | 4'174 KB/s |
| Random read IOPS | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 160'832 KB/s |
| 16k | 47'147 KB/s |
| 64k | 16'426 KB/s |
| 96k | 12'569 KB/s |
| 128k | 4'234 KB/s |
Area of Application and Performance
The RevoDrive 3 is the smaller brother of OCZ's RevoDrive 3 X2. A closer look at the performance shows that the throughput rates are still considerably high. We were able to measure up to 850 Megabyte per second of sequential throughput when moving big files. Also the IOPS are on a highly competitive level. If we consider the price, then we can recommend this expansion card for consumer grade workstations where one has to keep the cost factor in mind.
Specifications |
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| Capacities | 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB | |
| Interface | PCI Express 2.0 x4 | |
| NAND Flash | MLC | |
| Form Factor | Full height | |
| Boot Device | Yes | |
| 240 GB Performance | Read: up to 975 MB/s Write: up to 875 MB/s IOPS: up to 120'000 at 4K |
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| 480 GB Performance | Read: up to 1000 MB/s Write: up to 900 MB/s IOPS: up to 130'000 at 4K |
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| 960 GB Performance | Read: up to 1000 MB/s Write: up to 925 MB/s IOPS: up to 130'000 at 4K |
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Prices |
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| Toppreise.ch | Geizhals.at | |
| RevoDrive 3 120 GB | CHF 237.60 | EUR 211.82 |
| RevoDrive 3 240 GB | CHF 320.50 | EUR 318.42 |
| RevoDrive 3 480 GB | CHF 566.30 | EUR 578.42 |
OCZ RevoDrive 3 - Performance |
|
| If you want to compare performance values of the OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 with more than 50 other SSD's we recommend to have a look at our SSD Charts: SSD Charts: 52 SSDs | |
| Sequential write | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 720'523 KB/s |
| 16k | 763'360 KB/s |
| 32k | 772'548 KB/s |
| 64k | 768'619 KB/s |
| 128k | 765'521 KB/s |
| 256k | 771'043 KB/s |
| Sequential Read | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 703'763 KB/s |
| 16k | 761'466 KB/s |
| 32k | 714'092 KB/s |
| 64k | 828'759 KB/s |
| 128k | 823'305 KB/s |
| 256k | 857'972 KB/s |
| Random write IOPS | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 95'782 KB/s |
| 16k | 30'346 KB/s |
| 64k | 11'273 KB/s |
| 96k | 8'924 KB/s |
| 128k | 6'601 KB/s |
| Random read IOPS | |
| Blocksize | Throughput |
| 4k | 91'614 KB/s |
| 16k | 34'391 KB/s |
| 64k | 12'994 KB/s |
| 96k | 9'705 KB/s |
| 128k | 6'401 KB/s |
Author: Marc Büchel m.buechel@ocaholic.ch