Hey TR Eds: How come no Revodrives in sys guide/reviews?

[Plazmodeus]

When I am wasting time at work looking at hardware, I look at SSD's and GPU's. Those are the drool-worthy stuffs.

I'm always drawn to those PCI-e RevoDrives. Currently at NCIX, they run around 2x what a SATA3 SSD goes for and seem to offer about 2x the (theoretical) performance. Thats not bad to me.

So I wonder why they don't appear up more in TR reviews and/or systems guides. For instance, why not in those spoogey double stuff workstations? Surely for a $3k machine you can find room for 1000mb/s transfer speeds, no?

In my experience, SSD's are the single most impactful upgrade one can make to a computer, so PCI-e SSD's seem like the gold standard in hardware covetry. How come you guys dont review them?

Am I missing something? Is there some drawbacks to those baby's?

[mac_h8r1]

From the "Guidelines":

Over the next few pages, you'll see us recommend and discuss components for four sample builds. Those builds have target budgets of $600, $900, $1,500, and around $3,000. Within each budget, we will attempt to hit the sweet spot of performance and value while mentally juggling variables like benchmark data, our personal experiences, current availability and retail pricing, user reviews, warranty coverage, and the manufacturer's size and reputation. We'll try to avoid both overly cheap parts and needlessly expensive ones. We'll also favor components we know first-hand to be better than the alternatives.

I think it's part of the juggling act.

[Dissonance]

The price premium commonly associated with PCIe SSDs makes them a tricky proposition for the guide. You give up capacity for performance, and we'd rather have more solid-state storage than a smaller SSD that might be faster. In day-to-day use, we haven't noticed as much of a difference between various SSD models as we have between them and mechanical drives.

There are of course scenarios that would benefit from something like a RevoDrive, but at this point I don't think I'd pick one over a high-capacity 2.5-incher for the Doublestuff. Since PCIe SSDs are arranged an awful lot like RAID configs, there's also the question of whether a PCIe solution would be better than hanging multiple SSDs off a chipset's RAID controller. Hmmm.

We've actually discussed doing some PCIe SSD coverage now that prices are getting down to reasonable levels. Look for something on that front once I'm done working my way through all the 2.5" SSDs we want to get to. The Twins have been busy

[Plazmodeus]

Thanks Dissonance, that makes sense.

But it does raise a question in this curious readers mind; what would a sata SSD in RAID vs. PCIe SSD comparison reveal? Does the SATA controller have the bandwidth to feed 2 SSDs? Currently NCIX will sell you 2 120gb Vertex 3's for around $400 (less after Mir), which is about what a 120gb Revodrive x3 can be had for. That would be some review...

[Mr. Bamboo Head]

they also have a hybrid a la seagate momentus 100gb ssd / 1tb hdd drive. very cool, tho still expensive.

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku= ... omoid=1141

[StuG]

Thanks Dissonance, that makes sense.

But it does raise a question in this curious readers mind; what would a sata SSD in RAID vs. PCIe SSD comparison reveal? Does the SATA controller have the bandwidth to feed 2 SSDs? Currently NCIX will sell you 2 120gb Vertex 3's for around $400 (less after Mir), which is about what a 120gb Revodrive x3 can be had for. That would be some review...

The real question is why would you give up TRIM for RAID.

[Mr. Bamboo Head]

Thanks Dissonance, that makes sense.

But it does raise a question in this curious readers mind; what would a sata SSD in RAID vs. PCIe SSD comparison reveal? Does the SATA controller have the bandwidth to feed 2 SSDs? Currently NCIX will sell you 2 120gb Vertex 3's for around $400 (less after Mir), which is about what a 120gb Revodrive x3 can be had for. That would be some review...

The real question is why would you give up TRIM for RAID.

Hmm so the performance degradation of ssd's losing TRIM due to raid would potentially wipe out the performance benefit over time?

[Mr. Bamboo Head]

Might be interesting to see how the real world performance stacks up against drives of similar performance/capacity.

Perhaps this OCZ Revodrive 230gb (sf1200) vs this sata3 Mushkin Chronos 240gb (sf2281). Prices are very similar and theoretical performance not *incredibly* different (read 530 MB/S vs 560 MB/S, write 450 MB/S vs 525 MB/S).

edit: I know they're based on different controllers, but the sf2281 revodrive is $750 for the same size drive

[Airmantharp]

Thanks Dissonance, that makes sense.

But it does raise a question in this curious readers mind; what would a sata SSD in RAID vs. PCIe SSD comparison reveal? Does the SATA controller have the bandwidth to feed 2 SSDs? Currently NCIX will sell you 2 120gb Vertex 3's for around $400 (less after Mir), which is about what a 120gb Revodrive x3 can be had for. That would be some review...

The real question is why would you give up TRIM for RAID.

Hmm so the performance degradation of ssd's losing TRIM due to raid would potentially wipe out the performance benefit over time?

That depends on the controller. Sandforce-based drives are reknowned for their garbage collection, which decreases the need for TRIM. Their reliability, on the other hand...

[morphine]

That depends on the controller. Sandforce-based drives are reknowned for their garbage collection, which decreases the need for TRIM. Their reliability, on the other hand...

The garbage collection is so advanced that it even collects the data.

*rimshot*

[Plazmodeus]

Well according to rumours that were spreading around late last year....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5136/inte ... for-raid-0

..intel was going to add TRIM support for RAID 0 in an upcoming driver. That driver isnt out yet, but once it is, it will be VERY tempting to put two Vertex3 120's together in aRAID 0. In theory that will add near revodrive-like performance.

Anyone heard anything about this 11.5 driver with RAID TRIM support?

[cynan]

I would also be interested in seeing a more high-end SSD config reviewed. Before we get to the PCIe SSDs, which are pretty much only available from OCZ, a more thorough analyses of RAID 0 performance benefits for SATA3 SSDs would be interesting. TRIM support aside, it would be nice to see if RAID 0 is worth the bother in the first place. I would suspect that unless you are doing a lot of sequential transfers, RAID 0 probably wouldn't increase performance perceptibly, but a review would clear this up.

Also as many know looking from previous reviews, due to how the controller access the parallel array of flash memory chips in SSDs, a larger capacity SSD, at least on paper, generally gives write performance (read performance also?) that is much faster than smaller ones. This often makes a RAID 0 proposition with smaller capacity drives questionable (when you can just buy the larger drive and get much of the extra performance that way).

However, I think it would still be interesting to see RAID 0 performance tests of larger drivers (ie, 256GB and up) to see what, if any, possible real world advantages might be achieved with SSD performance above and beyond what is found in the recent SATA3 256GB drives.

That said, of course it makes sense that TR first review configs that more users are likely to, well, use.

[frumper15]

I was just reading a bunch of SSD in RAID articles on storagereview this morning - the 520, 830, M4... Interesting for sure, but RAID5 of 3x 256Gb drives is probably always going to be out of my price range, much like SLI or CFX of very high end graphics solutions. While the results are interesting, I would much rather have the TR staff spend their time doing what they're doing...reviewing hardware and putting together great system guides. Now, if they find a bunch of spare time laying around...sure why not