Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup

Internals:

Here’s the full OCZ PCIe lineup: RevoDrive, RevoDrive x2, RevoDrive 3 x2, and finally, the Z-Drive R4:

Let’s take a closer look at this beast:

The OCZ SuperScale VCA 2.0 processor is hiding under a heatsink at the far left. Just above that we see some PCB space reserved for a bank of capacitors (differentiating the pictured ‘C’ model from its higher-end brother). A daughter board holds 4x SF-2200 controllers and 800GB (!) of Intel 25nm MLC flash memory, obscuring a duplicate bank of 4 more SF-2200’s and another 800GB of flash.

Separating the PCB’s, we can see an onobscured view of what is in essence 8 200GB SF-2200 SSD’s.

A shot of the rear shows even more flash memory. Total flash chip count: 128! Don’t be fooled – each SF is only connected to 16x 16GB flash chips – the chips had to be arranged into single rows of 8 for each controller (we’re used to seeing a 4×2 arrangement on prior cards). This was necessary to cram 8 SSD’s onto this single solution.

Removing the heatsink, we can see the OCZ SuperScale processor. This is where the VCA 2.0 goodness happens.

That’s just a lot of flash, any way you slice it!

…and here’s the playing field for today. We’ll compare the new Z-Drive against it’s prior iterations, as well as throwing a full round of FusionIO ioDrive’s into the mix – the ioDrive 160GB SLC and ioXtreme 80GB models.

Testing Methodology

Our tests are a good mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. PCMark, IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we’ll help you out!

Test System Setup

We’re breaking in a new SandyBridge testbed. Necessary for properly testing these new drives, even with the known issues. We’re now using a revised version of this chipset that has solved the compatibility and performance issues.

PC Perspective would like to thank ASUS, Corsair, and Kingston for supplying some of the components of our test rig. 


Hard Drive Test System Setup
CPU Intel Core i5-2500K
Motherboard Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-2133 CL9
Hard Drive G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD
Sound Card N/A
Video Card BFG Geforce 8400 GS 512MB PCI
Video Drivers Geforce 181.22
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-650TX
DirectX Version DX9.0c
Operating System Windows 7 X64

 
  • PCMark05
  • Yapt
  • IOMeter
  • HDTach
  • HDTune
  • PCPer File Copy Test

 

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