OCZ's RevoDrive Preview: An Affordable PCIe SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 25, 2010 2:15 AM ESTInstallation and Early Issues
OCZ doesn’t do anything to hide what’s going on under the hood. The Silicon Image RAID BIOS loads at POST, it’ll even let you enter the BIOS and destroy the RAID array if you’d like. The first time I tried to install Windows on the RevoDrive I actually had to recreate the RAID array. I headed into the Silicon Image BIOS, asked to recreate the array, specified the entire 223GB capacity and hit ok. My sample is a bit early so I don’t expect that all users will have to deal with that, but just be aware that there are no abstraction layers here. You’re working with a pre-configured RAID array.
The RevoDrive is bootable, but you need to supply Windows with the appropriate drivers to recognize the controller. OCZ provided me with a set of 64-bit drivers for the Sil3124 controller and I was on my way. Windows 7 x64 installed without a hitch.
I did notice that I got consistency warnings between reboots however. The OS would run a chkdsk operation, find some issues with files, repair them and let me get on with things. Again, I’m not sure how much of this is due to the early nature of my sample.
The Test
| CPU | Intel Core i7 965 running at 3.2GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled) |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) |
| Chipset: | Intel X58 + Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel IMSM 8.9 |
| Memory: | Qimonda DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 285 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 190.38 64-bit |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows 7 x64 |
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Demon-Xanth - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
That connector is called a MICTOR (not sure on the spelling). It's made to hook a logic analyzer up to and generally not useful for most people.Trisagion - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
Doesn't look like a MICTOR to me. A MICTOR has contacts aligned along the center, this one has contacts that are on aligned on opposite sides along the center.flgt - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
It looks like the Samtec version of the MICTOR. QSH series maybe. Same concept though. High speed, impedance controlled debug or board-to-board connector.Trisagion - Sunday, June 27, 2010 - link
Yes, I think you're right. Thanks!mrmike_1949 - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
whenever you test ssd, you should still include a fast hdd as a reference point!mckirkus - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Seconded. A VRaptor would have been a good idea. Also, can you RAID two of these like SLI vid cards?Intel clearly has RAID figured out. I'm guessing they're going to drop their on version of this thing in Q4 with 22nm flash and blow everybody else out of the water. I also wonder what the latency is like going through all of those bridges and controllers. PCI-e is supposed to be lower latency than SATA right?
Voo - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
The problem with that is, that even the fastest 15k rpm SCSI drive would still be nothing more than a bar in most benchmarks, so not really that usefull and if you're interested in it you could always use bench.Though you have a point that it'd be a helpful reminder of the huge difference between HHDs and SSDs and would show that the differences even between the fastest/slowest SSDs aren't that important if compared to HDDs.
chemist1 - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
OK, when can they shrink one of these onto an express card, so I can plug it into the PCIe slot on my early-2008 MacBook Pro (whose SATA interface is limited to 150 MB/s)?aya2work - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Anand,Your storage bench are very interesting and looks like most adequate storage test. Do you have any plans to make it available for other users? (for personal use)
ps: sorry for poor English
Breit - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Is it possible to change the stripe size on the RevoDrive's internal RAID-0 in the SI BIOS? I did a little research myself regarding stripe sizes in SSD-RAID-0's and found that a 16kb stripe size is ideal for overall performance instead of the default 64kb (at least on Intel ICH10-R). With that configured a Vertex LE RAID-0 (x2) could easily come from around 40K to 80-90K in the Vantage HDD Suite.