ocz revodrive questions

kiel367

kiel367

kiel367

Associate
Joined
17 Jul 2009
Posts
2,162
Location
at home, you?
been looking at the 120gb version for a while, and having had a crucial m4 in the past, im just wondering, how much of a performance boost over a normal ssd would it give me?

currently running

i5 2500k
12gb ddr3 1600mhz
gigabyte z68ap-d3
6950

also, does it actually use a full sized pci-e slot? just interested as to wether it would limit me to 1 gfx card
 
Using a RevoDrive for booting off is actually pretty slow as the system has to initialise the card first.

They use a pci-e x4 slot but if none are available a x16 slot will do.

For normal use once the system is up and running, you would not really notice any speed difference between a RevoDrive and SSD. Depending on the model some of the more expensive RevoDrives are very fast on benchmarks but for everyday use you would not notice the extra speed.
 
Anything faster than a standard SATA 2 SSD drive is not really noticeable on a desktop. The super fast drives are intended for very high server/database workloads where the transactional speed (the number of IOPS or IO per second) is the bottleneck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS

As per the above Wikipedia article, a 7200 RPM SATA disk has 75-100 IOPS, and a bog standard SSD has 60,000 IOPS -- that's 600x more random IO operations per second, on a cheap SSD. That is a MASSIVE increase in random IO speed, almost three orders of magnitude greater!

Now lets compare the cheap SSD with a RevoDrive 3 X2 (I don't know how many RevoDrive models there are, I'm just using the one in the Wikipedia article as an example). Cheap SSD: 60,000 IOPS, RevoDrive: 200,000 IOPS, which is "only" a 3.3x increase in speed.

The RevoDrive (and others like it) are amazing drives. However, they are designed for very specific purposes, and desktop use is not one of them -- a desktop will never be throwing 60,000 IOPS at a drive, let alone 200,000. It's like using a huge van to transport a handbag -- it does the job, but is massively over-speced. And as stated above, your boot times will increase greatly because of the additional time required to initialise the card. Also, very expensive. Cool to have, but not worth it as you won't perceive any gains from it.
 
Let me pre-emptively add that people will chime in to say that they notice a massive difference because they have one. This is called confirmation bias.

Benchmarks show that a RevoDrive is faster than a standard SATA 2 SSD, there is no disputing these facts. However, just as in my above example nobody disputes that a van has more carrying capacity than a Golf, but if I don't need/can't use the carrying capacity of the van, then why pay for it, and put up with the inconvenience of it?

If you have the money, then for the coolness factor alone go for it. Just saying that you probably won't notice a shred of difference, it will definitely impact your boot times, and it may even stop you from e.g. suspending/hibernating your PC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom