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The OCZ Revodrive 3 X2 is nicely packaged, with a high resolution image of the product on the front of the box.
The inner box slides out to expose the bundle, including the drive which is packaged in an anti static bag. OCZ include a user manual detailing the installation instructions, and a tongue in cheek sticker which states ‘my SSD is faster than your HDD'.
The RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB is powered by a quad configuration of SF2281 controller chips. It is firmly aimed at the ultra high end consumer market. After formatting, there is around 447GB of storage available.
“The RevoDrive 3 X2 provides unique benefits to users by incorporating features from the VCA 2.0 flash virtualization software that allow certain direct memory access (DMA) and data management functions. Included in this feature-set are OCZ’s exclusive command queuing and queue balancing algorithms, which can be handled by the onboard processing core for higher performance and reduced burden on the host resources. VCA 2.0 is also the only virtualization layer in the industry with TRIM and SCSI unmap support to enhance sustained performance and provide greater endurance by significantly reducing the overhead associated with garbage collection. Furthermore, VCA also offers consolidated SMART support and provides system administrators with advanced features for monitoring, analyzing, and reporting device attributes.”
Installing the drive is straightforward, simply use an available PCI-E 4x (or better) slot on the motherboard. OCZ have detailed a handy motherboard support guide which you can view over here. It is worth pointing out that some motherboards may limit speeds, depending on the specific slot and graphics card configuration.
The image above highlights the layout of the product. There is a main PCB board underneath, with a daughter card mounted on top. Each of these layers shares half of the NAND memory and controller chips. There are not one, not two, but four Sandforce SF-2281 controllers to handle all the tasty features, such as TRIM, data compression and error correction.
Earlier versions of the drive sent to press didn't have the heatsink which is pictured above. This has been included to help manage temperatures under extended, heavy load.
OCZ are using 25nm Micron MLC flash (29F64G08CBAAA), asynchronous by design and built around 64GB die configurations.
Its a lot of money for a drive (or card in this case, whatever its classed as), but for the high end audience this would rock. especially for video editing and streaming of HD content. I would guess that tv studios would use these a lot.
they don’t worth the money yet, way too expensive, not reliable, i better with two Raptors.
I dont think this is meant as a mainstream solution. I cant ever see the need for this myself.
A 120gb SATA 3 drive is more than enough for the mainstream audience, or even the high end audience, but this is a heck of a showcase for OCZ.
Why do you say unreliable 63jax?? have there been reports?
I heard the last ones had a fairly high failure rate. read a thread on it (think it might have been OCZ’s forum).
Hadnt read anything about these. quitre a few reviews up already for the 3 series and everyone seems to say they are ass kicking everything else.
Yeah, very nice. but id expect a new gaming laptop for the same price. PRO market product. scary speeds !
and relating to the numerous and infamous BSOD and freezes found with the new Sandforce controllers?
Are these drives failing too? or was that older ones? I dont think OCZ had a huge issue with 2281 failures. I think this was all sorted out a while ago….
i meant the SSDs in general are not reliable, OCZ has the highest return rate from them all, the safest right now are Intel’s drives, kinda…
i personally will wait a bit longer to refine them.
Just a note to say that running check disk on a revodrive is a bad idea. It is OK to run check disk switch free but I lost 40 GB to bad secotrs when I attempted to run checkdisk with the “b” switch. ie.e “check for recover bad sectors”.