Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts

Conclusion:

PROS:

  • Increased IOPS and throughput as compared to the OCZ RevoDrive 350
  • Lower cost/GB than the OCZ RevoDrive 350 (see below)
  • SCSI device boot compatibility more widely supported than NVMe at present

CONS:

  • Low Queue Depth response time and IOPS remains limited by SandForce controllers
  • Lack of NVMe support translates to greater CPU penalty per IO
  • Required driver complicates OS install
  • Only available in 480GB capacity

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Pricing and Availability:

Pricing is as follows:

Phoenix Blade:

  • 480GB – $700    ($1.46/GB) Newegg

Compared to the direct competitor, the RevoDrive 350, currently at:

  • 240GB – $517    ($2.15/GB) Amazon
  • 480GB – $800    ($1.67/GB) Amazon
  • 960GB – $1,280 ($1.33/GB) Amazon

Warranty:

The G.Skill Phoenix Blade carries a 3 year warranty.

Final Thoughts:

G.Skill's first PCIe SSD offering certainly came out of the gate running, and was able to unseat the OCZ RevoDrive 350 in virtually every performance metric. Despite this, the use of high latency SandForce controllers really limit the performance of these units at lower queue depths, which is where the consumers they target are likely to spend most of their time. I would really like to see the SBC implementation driving lower latency SATA devices, but as it stands, we have a well built product that turns in superior performance at a price $100 cheaper than its direct competitor's nearly identical product.

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