OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

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Lawrence Lee
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OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by Lawrence Lee » Mon Mar 14, 2011 1:35 pm


Devonavar
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Re: OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by Devonavar » Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:47 am

So, if I understand this correctly, there is much less performance benefit when transferring compressed files?

In other words, editing video is unlikely to see much benefit? Nearly all HD editing (even high end) uses somewhat lossy codecs, so I would expect that there is little space for more compression. (Try zipping just about any compressed video file ... they are already optimally compressed).

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Re: OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by MikeC » Tue Mar 15, 2011 12:10 pm

Depends on what you mean by "transferring compressed files", Devon... and compared to what? If you mean copy, compared to the WD Velociraptor 600, it's 30% faster with small files and 2.5x faster with large ones. That's a pretty big speed boost, imo. If you mean actually coding/decoding a compressed file, it's ~20% faster. See pages 4 & 5.

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Re: OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by dhanson865 » Tue Mar 15, 2011 12:23 pm

All Sandforce controller SSDs slow down when dealing with uncompressible writes. That isn't limited to just compressed files. It's also true of files that just won't compress such as encrypted files or files that randomly happen to defy encryption even though they aren't already compressed or encrypted.

Maybe not the end of the world in terms of significance but performance with Sandforce drives will vary in sometimes unpredictable fashion due to this as the average user and even the elite users aren't going to be aware what is or isn't compressible until they try it.

I'd have to assume video/audio editing fanatics would be all over the C400 and friends (Intel 510, Corsair Performance 3, Plextor PX-M2, C300) since they have more consistent performance with writes of uncompressable files. And of course those wanting top write speeds would need to focus on the 256GB and 512GB models as the write speed is slower on the 128GB and 64GB models.

If I don't put a disclaimer here you'll get someone chiming in to say that Sandforce drives don't slow down at lower capacities but that isn't true. It's just a misconception because the average tech site doesn't review multiple capacities and they generally don't do so with uncompressable data. A short comparison is made in this post

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Re: OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by MikeC » Tue Mar 15, 2011 8:23 pm

Comments from OCZ regarding the review. Biggest point: RevoDrive DOES HAVE Garbage Collection. More on this later.
OCZ Technology wrote:I would like to mention a couple things.

We were also disappointed that it lacks both TRIM and garbage collection to prevent performance degradation over time; this lack may be the fatal flaw which cuts short the life cycle of this product in the marketplace.
Neither the REVO or the REVO X2 support TRIM however because the drives are SandForce based, both have garbage collection.

The OCZ RevoDrive 120GB is an incredibly fast drive, but with a street price of about US$300, it has one of the worst performance to dollar ratios in the business, representing a classic case of diminishing returns — you're paying a lot more for a marginal improvement. Is it worth the extra cost over a single Vertex 2?
I checked Newegg today and the going price is $270. If I may ask, where was the mentioned price referenced from?

If your pockets are extremely deep, you might go one step further and try the OCZ RevoDrive X2 instead. It is basically a RevoDrive with four controllers in RAID 0 rather than two and garbage collection, which may be critical if you want to retain the performance you're paying for.
There is no architectural difference between the REVO and the REVO X2 aside for the addition of 2 more controllers resulting in an increase in performance.

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Re: OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by MoJo » Wed Mar 16, 2011 3:52 am

Any kind of non-TRIM garbage collection is limited by the fact that the SSD can't tell what data is in use and what can be dumped. Only the PC which can read the filesystem knows that. Mike, maybe you should run some more tests to determine the effects of this. Basically fill the drive with lots of small files, delete some at random, say 10%, re-fill, repeat... Run periodic benchmarks. See if performance drops off. I bet it does.

Most of the benefit from SSDs is in the seek speed. Even with video editing you tend to be loading small amounts of data and then processing them. Even on a really fast computer it just can't process hundreds of megabytes of video per second. Raw transfer speed helps with paging large chunks of memory and large file copying.

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Re: OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD

Post by dhanson865 » Wed Mar 16, 2011 7:08 am

MikeC wrote:Comments from OCZ regarding the review. Biggest point: RevoDrive DOES HAVE Garbage Collection. More on this later.
OCZ Technology wrote:I would like to mention a couple things.

The OCZ RevoDrive 120GB is an incredibly fast drive, but with a street price of about US$300, it has one of the worst performance to dollar ratios in the business, representing a classic case of diminishing returns — you're paying a lot more for a marginal improvement. Is it worth the extra cost over a single Vertex 2?
I checked Newegg today and the going price is $270. If I may ask, where was the mentioned price referenced from? [/color]
I had no part in making this review but I'm curious to see how the pricing stacks up since it's been questioned. First lets look at Google Products search results for my zip code

Code: Select all

Seller                Tax and shipping            Total price Base price
Amazon.com            No tax + Free shipping      $269.99     $269.99
Newegg.com            Tax: $24.97 + Free shipping $294.96     $269.99
B&H Photo-Video-Audio No tax + Free shipping      $299.99     $299.99
Mwave.com             No tax + Shipping: $9.20    $303.95     $294.75
TigerDirect.com       No tax + Shipping: $6.89    $306.88     $299.99
Central Computers     No tax + Shipping: $8.02    $307.97     $299.95
WIREDZONE.com         No tax + Free shipping      $310.81     $310.81
ValleySeek            No tax + Shipping: $10.77   $312.32     $301.55
Provantage            No tax + Shipping: $5.45    $314.18     $308.73
.....
..... Many results cut
.....
NextWarehouse.com     No tax + Free shipping      $466.70     $466.70
There were 101 stores listed so I took the 9 cheapest and the most expensive to show what the price curve looks like.

Next, I have to say that Google Products pricing can be very misleading as once you click through to the site the product may have a different price or may be out of stock so I'll check the first few of these and see what I get.

Amazon, seems to be in stock and the price shows as free shipping with or without Amazon Prime.

Newegg, seems to be in stock and the price matches the Google Products listing.

B&H, says Usually ships in 7-14 business days so they may not have stock.

Mwave has it in stock but clicking through shows me a after shipping price of $304.69 vs the $303.95 quoted on Google Products.

I can see both sides of this. OCZ is right that you can get it for $270 in the US because Amazon delivers at that price. The SPCR comment about a $300 street price could be seen as reasonable because tax varies by where you ship it to and "street price" should include any fee that the consumer pays from taxes to S & H to any goofy fee a retailer might choose to add.

The final price will change based on availability and the location of the end user that is going to buy it.

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