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).

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.

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

Comments from OCZ regarding the review. Biggest point: RevoDrive DOES HAVE Garbage Collection. More on this later.

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.

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



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.