Configuration:
OCZ Technology's RevoDrive 50GB PCI Express SSD was tested in a system with the following configuration:
» Intel Core i7-920 quad-core processor
» ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 motherboard
» Cooler Master Z600 heatpipe CPU cooler
» Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB 6Gbps SSD (boot drive)
» Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 6Gbps hard drive
» Crucial Ballistix Tracer 6GB DDR3-1600 memory kit
» ASUS Radeon HD6870 1GB graphics card
» Nesteq EECS 700 Watt modular power supply
» Toshiba slim DVD drive
» Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Typically at this stage of the review I will include a screenshot from
CrystalDiskInfo to capture all of the basic information regarding the drive in question. Unfortunately, the RevoDrive was not detected by this software, so there is nothing to show.
While it isn't quite as informative or interesting, the screenshot below does show how Windows sees the RevoDrive. The Device Manager shows two entries for the RevoDrive, one for the drive and the other for the drive controller. In the "Disk drives" section we see an entry for the SiImage SCSI Disk Device, and down in the "Storage controllers" section we see an entry for the Silicon Image SiI 3124 SoftRAID 5 Controller.
In order to get things set up properly, as seen in the image above, it is necessary to download a device driver from the OCZ Technology website. This driver is needed for adding the RevoDrive to an existing system, or for establishing it as the boot drive for a fresh install.
Along the same lines as CrystalDiskInfo not seeing the drive and needing a special driver to install the drive, I have another observation to make. I tried using a few common utilities to clone an existing installation of Windows 7 to the RevoDrive, and none were successful. Typically I just use a bootable Acronis DVD to do this, and with an SSD the job is done in under 10 minutes, but not this time. From Windows based applications to bootable DVDs, from free to paid programs, I have yet to find a way to clone an existing install to the RevoDrive.
Testing:
All benchmarks were run on the system with the specifications detailed in the previous section of this review, and the benchmark applications were launched from the Crucial RealSSD C300 drive listed as the boot drive.
For comparison purposes, the RevoDrive 50GB solid state drive will be matched up against five other solid state drives that I consider to be at least somewhat high-speed:
» Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB 6Gbps SSD [
review link]
» OCZ Technology 50GB Vertex 2 SSD [
review link]
» OCZ Technology 60GB Agility SSD [
review link]
» Super Talent UltraDrive 32GB FTM32GX25H SSD [
at eWiz.com]
» Intel X25-M 80GB SSD [
review link]
Even though the Crucial RealSSD C300 is the only drive designed to take advantage of SATA 6Gbps technology, all drives were tested on a SATA 6Gbps controller native to the test system's motherboard.
The benchmarks to be executed on the five drives were pulled from the applications listed below.
» PassMark Performance Test 7.0 Advanced Disk Test
» PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite
» ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.41
» AS SSD Benchmark 1.4.3704.27281
Warm Up Round:
CrystalDiskMark is a popular free utility that can be used to get a quick idea of a drive's performance. While I don't use it as an official part of SSD reviews, it does provide a nice "warm up" to the other tests to be considered. Anyone should be able to run this utility on their own system and get an idea of what their current drive can do.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 was run just on the OCZ Technology RevoDrive. What we see in the screen capture below is that this test does not let the drive come close to its specified speeds (540 MB/s read / 450 MB/s write), but it does put up some impressive numbers on the read side of the table. When it comes to writing, this test doesn't give the best first impression considering the maximum value is about 20% of the rated speed...
