Revodrive or Revodrive hybrid?

[rik81h]

Hi all, i'm just putting together a build for someone and i've been contemplating using the new revodrive hybrid in it. I know as it's not out yet there's no benches done and all we've got is the manufacturer max speeds but how do you think the hybrid will fair, say against a revodrive x3 120gb along with a 1tb sata for storage?

Thanks

 

[Zarf]

Unless they have a genuine need to pull >500MB/s just get a single SATA6Gb SSD, with the cash you save you can probably get a 240GB drive which is a far more comfortable amount of space. Support it up with a couple of 1Tb drives in RAID1 for bulk media (yes RAID1 is not a backup yada yada, and you should have a backup methodology as well but with the price of mechanical storage there's no good reason not to add some resiliency).

When I say genuine need I mean it, i.e professionally works with huge raw video files or photo albums. for normal apps and games there's practically no noticeable difference between a Revodrive and any SSD out in the past couple of years.

 

[rik81h]

Thanks for the reply Zarf. No there's no 'real' need as you put it. Just that it's in budget and wanting the fastest performance.

Does your reasoning also include the forthcoming revodrive hybrid which obviously gives better price per gb over the standard? And also outperforms intel srt.

 

[ecat]

The good side of the ssd caching solutions, revo hybrid, intel srt is two fold:

1) They do all the boring coping to and from HD for you
2) They cache what you actually use so they do not waste costly ssd space storing miscellaneous junk. Example, I'd guess 80% of a win7 install is misc. junk that will never/seldom be loaded?

The bad side is potential wear on the ssd as data is added/removed from the cache: The intel recommended implementation uses SLC flash, revo hybrid is overprovisioned by 28%. Interestingly, the new OCZ standalone Synapse flash/cache drive is overprovisioned by 50%!!

How does the wear issue affect you? I have no idea. Your usage patterns, the page erase life of the drive and the caching algorithm and write options will all come into play.

Finally, do you need >500MB/s? Indeed, do you need >150MB/s?

To test this for my own amusement I've been playing with FancyCache and SuperCache using 2x HDD Raid0 and 4GB RAM for the cache area. Oh boy you should see the benchmarks fly, but loading apps and compiling code shows little improvement. Watching the numbers and graphs change on second and third test runs suggests the inbuilt windows caching is doing its job and takes precedence over these 3rd party programs. Delaying writes can speed some things up, notably writing , in that it allows the system to get on with things instead of waiting for all bytes to hit storage, this could be of benefit.

I've used Raid 0 for years now, and in that time I've had hundreds say 'you'll never notice the difference in real use'. They are of course wrong, you do get a more snappy feel the first time something loads and if you are endlessly rebuilding multi GB databases the speed difference really shows. These days I'm becoming more convinced that outside of benchmarks and 2 system boots a day, my money is better spent on RAM and allowing windows to take care of itself?

Still, I'm awaiting the hybrid benchmarks with much anticipation: just how slow is that little HDD? can the HDD be changed? Can I make 2 run in Raid0, lol, or should I go back to my dreams of a sexy LSI 9260 + 4x HDD Raid5 + 4x SSD Raid 0 Cache? Even bigger lol!

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid (user manual): http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-hybrid-pci-express-storage-solution.html
OCZ Synapse Cache: http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-synapse-cache-sata-iii-2-5-ssd.html

 

[rik81h]

You make some good points there ecat. You'd hope all those wasted windows files aren't loaded thats for sure. And yes that overprovision on the synapse is ridiculous especially when they'll definately be charging you for it. Bet it's priced around the vertex 3's if not higher because of the software, seeing as they'll be aimed at all but z68 owners bet they have nifty marketing strategy for them.

The wear issue, only time will tell, fair i hope.

How much playing around time do you have! lol Delaying writing is a good idea for the speed but probably a bit too risjy for me to run in enhanced mode.

Lol your dreams sound expensive.

So revodrive, hybrid, srt or just plain old vertex 3 lol?!?!? Certainly swinging towards the latter now for this build.

 

[ecat]

The overprovision makes for an interesting argument:

128GB drive of which 64GB is available for cache and the caching sw is smart enough to use all 64GB to best advantage by ensuring the stuff you have used over the past few days is accelerated.

vs

Standard 128GB drive. Even when notionally full, you may want to leave 10 to 20GB free to help with the page life. You install windows, remembering all the miscellaneous junk is wasted space. You install another 80GB of applications and data. Cool, but how many of those applications and how much of all that data have you actually used over the past few days? Anything you have not used is, with respect to the caching solution, wasted space.

heh, this is why I love the idea of the caching drive, I just don't know how much real world benefit we will see. Need review.. NOW

Dreams are expensive and if Angellina doesn't hurry up with that maid outfit I'm sending her back to the pitt <grrr>

 

[rik81h]

lol i like your sense of humour. Maybe she can borrow j lo's outfit from the film.
Toys take too much thinking about, should just buy them all