OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB PCI-E SSD Review

[AkG]

In a perfect world we would all be able to afford 480GB monster SSDs like the RevoDrive 3 x2 but until prices come down by a fair amount, standard hard drives continue to outsell solid state drives by a wide margin. Concern over limited capacity has also justified many people’s steadfast adherence to HDDs but there are solutions out there which offer the best of both worlds. For starters, Intel’s new Z68 chipset allows for the installation of an SSD alongside a traditional hard drive for drastically improved boot times through information caching. OCZ’s all new RevoDrive Hybrid takes this idea to the next level by localizing the caching and storage systems on a single device.

Before we continue, let’s be clear: the RevoDrive Hybrid isn’t meant to compete against the standard RevoDrives or even the Vertex 3s of this world. Rather, it aims to offer capacity and performance without having to mess around with finicky software.

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Much like competing hybrid HDD / SSD setups, the OCZ Revo Hybrid uses advanced real time algorithms to decide which data will be stored on the hard drive and what will be localized on the solid state portion. Unlike other hybrid setups such as the Seagate Momentus XT, the OCZ solution doesn’t use a small capacity, easily overwhelmed cache which can only boost a limited number of applications. Rather, it combines a 100GB RevoDrive 3 with a standard 5400rpm 1TB 2.5” hard drive. With such a large amount of ultra fast NAND to work with, this drive will be able to boost the performance of even more of your applications and games before resorting to the attached hard drive.

Making the RevoDrive Hybrid even more attractive to consumers, its PCI-E design eliminates your motherboard’s SATA controller from the performance equation. As long as a motherboard has a Gen 2 PCI-E x4 slot it will be able to access all 910MB/s worth of performance this device has to offer. Unfortunately, all this power and storage capacity does come with an equally large asking price of $470.

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From an architectural standpoint the RevoDrive Hybrid shares more in common with a RevoDrive 3 x2 than it does with the standard RevoDrive 3. It consists of a main PCB which houses 120GB worth of NAND ICs, a pair of SF2281’s controllers –each is responsible for 60GB worth of NAND– , the SuperScale processor and one SAS to PCIE x4 gen 2 bridge chip. The only real difference is the daughter card which houses the 1TB hard drive.

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The hard drive OCZ has opted for is the Toshiba MK-1059GSM (aka Toshiba HDD2K11 seen in our 2.5” hard drive charts). This 1TB, enterprise class (12.5mm) 2.5” hard drive is attached to the board via a standard SATA data and power ports. It is certainly not the fastest 2.5” hard drive on the market but it should get the job done.

Unfortunately, it is NOT possible to upgrade the Hybrid’s HDD as it is specifically keyed to the firmware system.

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While there is enough space for 32 NAND ICs, the RevoDrive hybrid only utilizes 16 NAND ICs. These 16 NAND chips are OCZ branded M25010164T048AX21 ICs and are the same Asynchronous ONFi 1.0 NAND IC’s found in an Agility 3 120GB.

 

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Say Hello To VCA 2.0

Say Hello To VCA 2.0

Virtualized Controller Architecture 2.0 - or VCA 2.0 for short - is a new flash virtualization layer created by OCZ for their enterprise grade devices. More importantly this new layer is what resides between the RAID controller hardware on the RevoDrive3 x2 and the operating system to facilitate communication and also happens to provide features never before seen on the OCZ RevoDrive series.

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The original RevoDrive also made use of a RAID controller - albeit a different one - but since VCZ 2.0 hadn't quite made it into OCZ's product stack, it was unable to do many things that users of the RevoDrive 3 will take for granted. The features packed into the SuperScale processor include firmware updating through OCZ's Toolbox software, the reporting of SMART information and implementation of OCZ’s Complex Command Queuing Structure (CCQS) which utilizes both Native and Tagged Command Queuing.

Most importantly though, VCA 2.0 allows for the RevoDrive 3 x2 to support the TRIM command along with Queue Balancing Algorithm (QBA) which balances drive loading across all four controllers.

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What OCZ calls QBA - or Queue Balancing Algorithm – underlines how much the RevoDrive 3 x2 has changed when compared to previous versions. At its heart, the unnamed “SuperScale” processor / SAS controller is a RAID controller but the custom firmware and VCA 2.0 implementation an entirely different beast than the original's RAID 0 setup.

Rather than having the SAS controller stripping data across all four SF2281 controllers, it uses real time dynamic load balancing and sends IO commands to each of the controllers on a case by case basis. For example, if one of the four “drives” on the PCBs is busy doing a read or write, another can be implementing an emergency block erase, while a third and even fourth could be doing something completely different. In theory four commands can be carried out at the exact same time without the need for the custom deep command queuing (aka CCQS) this drive implements.

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While a unique configuration and custom software layer is indeed interesting, it is the TRIM capabilities on these high end PCI-E solutions which many have been waiting for. Sadly, while this device has the POTENTIAL to pass on the TRIM command to the four SF2281 controllers, it lacks this ability right now.

It is important to remember that the RevoDrive 3 is basically a SCSI device (the controller is a SAS or Serial Attached SCSI controller) and accepts SCSI commands over PCIe. This means the operating system will have to send the TRIM command via the MS StorPort SCSI driver rather than the standard AHCI method. Unfortunately Microsoft’s StorPort does not currently support sending the TRIM command so the RevoDrive is still S.O.L. in this area.

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While OCZ states they are working closely with Microsoft to get an updated driver as soon as possible, but we don't realistically expect anything soon.

 

[AkG]

RevoDrive Hybrid and CPU Utilization

RevoDrive Hybrid and CPU Utilization

Since the RevoDrive Hybrid is at heart a software rather than hardware-based Hybrid solution, higher CPU utilization is to be expected but exactly how much is the question.

To obtain an accurate picture of exactly how much CPU horsepower this device truly requires we have configured the RevoDrive Hybrid as a secondary “D” data drive and let the system idle with a minimum of processes running. Using Windows' built in Performance Monitor we can see exactly how much processing power is being dedicated to a given storage solution. Lastly, we run Crystal DiskMark while monitoring CPU utilization.

The processor used is a Core i5 2500K which is running at stock speed.

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While a 24% reduction in idle processor consumption compared to RevoDrive X3 is step in the right direction we would hesitate to go as far as saying this is a good result. To be blunt, 24% reduction in CPU cycles still means that even while idling the Hybrid demands more processing cycles than many modern applications require. So when the system is doing absolutely nothing a modern quad core CPU will still be consistently hitting 50% usage. So just like the RevoDrive 3 x2, regardless of the processor you are using, the RevoDrive Hybrid will never let your system enter a low power state.

 

[AkG]

Testing Methodology

Testing Methodology

Testing a drive is not as simple as putting together a bunch of files, dragging them onto folder on the drive in Windows and using a stopwatch to time how long the transfer takes. Rather, there are factors such as read / write speed and data burst speed to take into account. There is also the SATA controller on your motherboard and how well it works with SSDs & HDDs to think about as well. For best results you really need a dedicated hardware RAID controller w/ dedicated RAM for drives to shine. Unfortunately, most people do not have the time, inclination or monetary funds to do this. For this reason our testbed will be a more standard motherboard with no mods or high end gear added to it. This is to help replicate what you the end user’s experience will be like.

Even when the hardware issues are taken care of the software itself will have a negative or positive impact on the results. As with the hardware end of things, to obtain the absolute best results you do need to tweak your OS setup; however, just like with the hardware solution most people are not going to do this. For this reason our standard OS setup is used. However, except for the Windows 7 load test times we have done our best to eliminate this issue by having the drive tested as a secondary drive. With the main drive being a Kingston HyperX 240GB Solid State Drive.

For synthetic tests we used a combination of the ATTO Disk Benchmark, HDTach, HD Tune, Crystal Disk Benchmark, IOMeter, AS-SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark 7.

For real world benchmarks we timed how long a single 10GB rar file took to copy to and then from the devices. We also used 10gb of small files (from 100kb to 200MB) with a total 12,000 files in 400 subfolders.

For all testing a Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard was used, running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate edition. All drives were tested using AHCI mode using Intel RST 10 drivers.

All tests were run 4 times and average results are represented.

In between each test suite runs (with the exception being IOMeter which was done after every run) the drives are cleaned with either HDDerase, SaniErase or OCZ SSDToolbox and then quick formatted to make sure that they were in optimum condition for the next test suite.

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Due to the unique nature of this hybrid setup certain tests have been omitted as they require an unformatted drive to test or gave erroneous results.


Processor: Core i5 2500
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: 8GB Mushkin DDR3 1300
Graphics card: Asus 5550 passive
Hard Drive: Kingston HyperX 240GB, OCZ 480GB RevoDrive3 x2
Power Supply: XFX 850


SSD FIRMWARE (unless otherwise noted):

OCZ Vertex 2 100GB: 1.33
OCZ Vertex 3 MI 240GB: 2.1.3
Corsair Force 3 GT 120GB: 1.3
Patriot Pyro 120GB: 3.2.0
Kingston HyperX 240GB: 3.2.0
Crucial M4 256GB: 009
Mushkin Chronos 120GB: 3.2.0
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB: 2.1.3
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB: 2.1.3

 

[AkG]

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drives read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.

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Let's start with explaining our testing methods throughout the benchmarking process. Since the strengths of this drive lie in its ability to remember and essentially speed up your most-used programs, to get a true idea of its abilities, we needed to run the same test multiple times (in this case, eight times). This allows it to cache information and as such, we included the first and last run information. Naturally, the "last run" should always provide a better result than the first one.

To be perfectly honest, we weren't expecting to see such impressive results. Both the first and final results are well in excess of what any hard drive – let alone this rather slow Toshiba hard drive – can do. The only logical explanation is that this software based caching setup is actually sending real time write and read commands to the solid state drive portion of the RevoDrive Hybrid.

It also appears that while it does take multiple runs to achieve optimal performance, the software does adapt pretty quickly and starts to rely more and more on the solid state drive and less on the hard drive. The end result is nothing but spectacular. This is certainly impressive as the hard drive OCZ has chosen is anything but a high performance model.

 

[AkG]

Crystal DiskMark / PCMark 7

Crystal DiskMark

Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB.

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The sequential read and write performance results may be lower than what ATTO would lead you to believe, but they are once again well above what the Hybrid's stand alone hard drive can accomplish. No hard drive can offer this level of performance and while it is indeed lower than what a good high performance 120GB – such as the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe – or a 240GB Solid State Drive can do, the numbers are still bloody impressive. If this drive can continue to offer nearly all the performance of a 240GB SSD while still offering four times the storage capacity we will be mightily impressed.

PCMark 7

While there are numerous suites of tests that make up PCMark 7, only one is pertinent: the HDD Suite. The HDD Suite consists of numerous tests that try and replicate real world drive usage. Everything from how long a simulated virus scan takes to complete, to MS Vista start up time to game load time is tested in these core tests; however we do not consider this anything other than just another suite of synthetic tests. For this reason, while each test is scored individually we have opted to include only the overall score.

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While the performance indeed does start out very good – and once again well above what this 2.5” 1TB hard drive can do – it gets even better as the number of runs increase. Satisfaction in this case may not be immediate, but when the algorithms do learn the data patterns it the RevoDrive Hybrid goes from being a decent competitor to dominating our other Hybrid drive: the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB.

 

[AkG]

AS-SSD / Access Time

AS-SSD

AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 64. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data.

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While not nearly as impressive as some of the other results, these numbers are still extremely good. The very fact that this hybrid drive can - almost - hold its own against “true” high performance solid state drives really is a testament to the amount of power OCZ has harnessed.

Access Time

To obtain an accurate reading on the read and write latency of a given drive, AS-SSD was used for this benchmark. A low number means that the drive’s data can be accessed quickly while a high number means that more time is taken trying to access different parts of the drive.

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Much like the other AS-SSD results, these results are on the surface a bit of a mixed bag. They are however very impressive when you take a closer look at them and look at them in a proper perspective.

The majority of the other products in our charts are high performance SSDs and yet this hybrid device can almost run neck and neck with them in write latency tests. When compared against what a more typical hybrid device can do – such as the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB – the OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid simply tramples all comers.

While the read latency is indeed piss poor, it is noticeably better what that abysmally slow Toshiba hard drive can do alone. Since the data is completely random in nature, the very fact that any of it can be boosted above HDD levels speaks volumes about the algorithms OCZ is using.

 

[AkG]

Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

Much like AS-SSD, Anvil Pro was created to quickly and easily – yet accurately – test your drives. While it is still in the Beta stages it is a versatile and powerful little program. Currently it can test numerous read / write scenarios but two in particular stand out for us: 4K queue depth of 4 and 4K queue depth of 16. A queue depth of four along with 4K sectors can be equated to what most users will experience in an OS scenario while 16 depth will be encountered only by power users and the like. We have also included the 4k queue depth 1 results to help put these two other numbers in their proper perspective. All settings were left in their default states and the test size was set to 1GB.

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As is the reoccurring theme, the results may not be as high as you would expect from typical a RevoDrive 3, but they are still eons better than what the hard drive along can provide. We can also see that OCZ's drive improves its performance over time so don't expect bleeding edge performance results from the getgo.

 

[AkG]

IOMETER

IOMETER

IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 queue depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,3xk,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular queue depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.

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While a typical Solid State Drive will blow the RevoDrive Hybrid away in our custom IOMeter tests, these results are still much improved when compared against high performance hard drives and even some SSDs. We have a sneaking suspicion that much like the RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB, these results are being bottlenecked by our CPU and the full potential of this hybrid setup is not being realized.

 

[AkG]

Win 7 Start Up + A/V Scan / Adobe CS5 Load Time

Windows 7 Start Up with Boot Time A/V Scan Performance

When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. Where Windows 7 has become nearly ubiquitous for solid state drive enthusiasts we have chosen Windows 7 64bit Ultimate as our Operating System. In previous load time tests we would use the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line; this however is no longer the case. We have not only added in a secondary Anti-Virus to load on startup, but also an anti-malware program. We have set Super Anti-Spyware to initiate a quick scan on Windows start-up and the completion of the quick scan will be our new finish line.

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As expected the first run results are not exactly what we would call overly impressive. This device does take a few times to figure out exactly what blocks and files need to be on the RevoDrive portion to get optimal start up experience. Once this is done however, there is no denying that the results are very good. It may not the absolute fastest device we have seen, but it is the fastest hybrid setup in our charts and the very fact that it can –almost - be compared against typical high performance solid state drives is a testament to how potent this new OCZ creation really is.

Adobe CS5 Load Time

Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, and while the latest version is actually pretty decent, when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit faired in the Adobe crucible.

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As with the load times, it did take multiple tries before the RevoDrive figured out that we did indeed want Adobe CS5 to load as fast as possible. Once this “eureka!” moment happened, the test results did indeed change from good to very good.