- Jul 11, 2009
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PCIe SSDs have been available for some time now, but have failed it seems, to garner much attention. The most attractive drive available on Newegg currently is the RevoDrive from OCZ. It is available on Newegg in capacities ranging from 50 to 480 GB. What makes this drive interesting (besides the PCIe interface) is the fact that it utilizes dual SF-1222 drives in RAID 0 with an onboard controller. This fact, combined with the higher bandwidth of the PCIe interface relative to SATA 3Gb/s allows for some pretty impressive performance specs.
■Read: Up to 540 MB/s
■Write: Up to 480 MB/s
■Sustained Write: Up to 400 MB/s
■Random Write 4KB (Aligned): 75,000 IOPS
OCZ RevoDrive 80GB
Moreover, the drive seems to indicate room for potential future upgrades: the RAID controller supports up to four SandForce controllers (it only currently has two), and curiously enough there is a mysterious connector in the center of the card. The resulting configuration would be akin to SLI/Crossfire of dual GPU cards (e.g. HD 5970) with SSDs.
Ok, so there are definite drawbacks to multi-SSD setups that many of you may be familiar with, i.e. TRIM support. Well, unfortunately this drive is no different from it's SATA counterparts in that respect - it lacks idle garbage collection. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that SandForce drives are fairly resilient and that no XP users can utilize TRIM anyway.
I know many people are likely to say "That's why we have SATA 6Gb/s." I don't necessarily disagree, in fact that is part of the reason for this post - to get everyone's opinion regarding whether future SSDs will continue to be predominantly ported for the SATA interface or whether PCIe will gain traction. For reference, the retail price for the 80GB RevoDrive is exactly double the retail price of two 40GB Vertex 2s (both are currently on sale until November), which it generally slightly outperforms. What would PCIe drives need to offer in order to win you over? What are some advantages of the PCIe or SATA interface? Please share any thoughts you have on the subject or SSDs in general.
■Read: Up to 540 MB/s
■Write: Up to 480 MB/s
■Sustained Write: Up to 400 MB/s
■Random Write 4KB (Aligned): 75,000 IOPS
OCZ RevoDrive 80GB
Moreover, the drive seems to indicate room for potential future upgrades: the RAID controller supports up to four SandForce controllers (it only currently has two), and curiously enough there is a mysterious connector in the center of the card. The resulting configuration would be akin to SLI/Crossfire of dual GPU cards (e.g. HD 5970) with SSDs.
Ok, so there are definite drawbacks to multi-SSD setups that many of you may be familiar with, i.e. TRIM support. Well, unfortunately this drive is no different from it's SATA counterparts in that respect - it lacks idle garbage collection. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that SandForce drives are fairly resilient and that no XP users can utilize TRIM anyway.
I know many people are likely to say "That's why we have SATA 6Gb/s." I don't necessarily disagree, in fact that is part of the reason for this post - to get everyone's opinion regarding whether future SSDs will continue to be predominantly ported for the SATA interface or whether PCIe will gain traction. For reference, the retail price for the 80GB RevoDrive is exactly double the retail price of two 40GB Vertex 2s (both are currently on sale until November), which it generally slightly outperforms. What would PCIe drives need to offer in order to win you over? What are some advantages of the PCIe or SATA interface? Please share any thoughts you have on the subject or SSDs in general.
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