OCZ RevoDrive 50GB SSD

No TRIM Support

While the SF-1200 chips that power the two drives that comprise the RevoDrive do support TRIM, there currently is no way to pass the command when the drives are in a RAID. To top it all off the SF-1200 chips don’t do any kind of background garbage collection like the Indilinx controllers do. Don’t worry it’s not as bad as it sounds. While you will lose some performance over time, the drive shouldn’t suffer from any kind of stuttering problem that plagued first gen SSD’s. The SandForce controllers are pretty resilient to performance loss, even without the aid of TRIM.

In the future, it may be possible for OCZ to release an update that enables TRIM, but no word has been heard regarding this.

Conclusion

This drive is clearly targeted towards enthusiasts. The performance is phenomenal. You get the performance of two drives in one package (because it really is two drives in one package). The model we reviewed costs $214. If you plan on installing your OS and applications on the drive, the 50GB is simply not enough storage. A standard Windows 7 install takes up around 20GB. This doesn’t leave you much room to install applications and games. You should probably think about the 80GB model (which can be found for $254) as a decent starting point. That should allow you to install Windows and still have some wiggle room for other applications. All the other sized drives will have similar performance to the 50GB model. Some of the higher capacity models will even have better performance because of the way NAND flash chips are written too.

The price point of the drive can make it a bit hard to swallow. Presently you can get two OCZ Vertex 2 drives (they have the same SandForce chip as the RevoDrive) for slightly less than the cost of the RevoDrive. That extra money is getting you simplicity. You have an all in one RAID 0 solution that is comparably easier to move to another machine than if you were to use two SandForce drives. The other issue is the performance of whatever RAID controller you use for the two drives. Some onboard RAID controllers are better than the Sil3124 that the RevoDrive uses (like the ICH10R), but unless you have prior knowledge of that, you’re taking a shot in the dark.

If you’re a first time SSD buyer or upgrading from a first gen SSD, the RevoDrive is a must buy for speed and simplicity. If you’re already invested in the SandForce platform or comparable, you probably won’t notice a huge performance difference, unless your workload is heavily I/O dependent. Long story short, this is one awesome piece of hardware.

  Previous Page         1. Introduction2. A Closer Look and Compatibility3. Test Setup, Datamarck, and HDTune4. ATTO and SiSoft Sandra5. PCMark Vantage and CrystalDiskMark6. No TRIM Support and Conclusion7. View All         Next Page