OCZ Ibis (240 GB)
The Ibis is very similar to OCZ’s RevoDrive X2, which probably would have been more appropriate for this shootout, as the RevoDrive X2 is a physical x4 PCI Express card. RevoDrives are available in 100, 160, 240, 360, 480, 720, and 960 GB capacities, along with 256 GB (220 GB) and 512 GB (460 GB) models. Although capacities and the concept appear very comparable to the products by Fusion-io and LSI, the product concept and positioning is not. Fusion-io and LSI focus on enterprise customers, which require custom firmware and highest class components, while the OCZ Ibis is an out of the box solution for enthusiasts and highest end consumers. It is important to keep this in mind when looking at the test results.
OCZ utilizes a Silicon Image Sil3134 controller to put four Sandforce SF-1200-powered SSDs into a RAID 0 setup. In the case of RevoDrive X2, this is all done on a single card that fits into a four-lane PCI Express 1.1 slot. The Ibis achieves the very same thing, but it puts the RAID controller onto a small four-lane PCI Express 1.1 add-in card, while the SSDs are located in a small external box attached via OCZ's HSDL interface.
OCZ says that there are indeed users who do not want to handle a vulnerable storage card, with all of its parts exposed, but instead prefer something solid and sealed-up. The Ibis definitely works out well then. It connects to the included Silicon Image storage controller through OCZ’s HDSL link. You will find detailed information on the technology in our article A New Storage Link For Super-Fast SSDs. In a nutshell, HSDL is an interpretation of PCI Express that can be utilized outside of a PC or from an expansion slot to a backplane using SFF-8087 SAS connectors. We like the approach, as it utilizes standardized hardware to do something new and valuable: increase storage performance.
If you think the Ibis is out of place in this comparison to several-thousand-dollar cards, our conclusion may surprise you.
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wow just wow, I want one so bad.
I want to see this comparison updated when Intel's 720 SSD arrives. Were Intel's listed speeds mere exaggeration?
The OCZ Revo and the Revo X2 drives have been available for a long time also the X3 has just been released,... IMO these should have been reviewed here too,...
i'm wondering how fast you can cold boot windows 7...
you really should have tested iodrive OCTAL. that would kick ass this shitty pci-e ssd's. Also you should have compared with ramdisks.
Ramdisks are orders of magnitude faster than any SSD available now. IoDrive is still very good despite it's age, the new ones are way faster.
that's all well and good but who cares?
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30 [...] r-than-fl/
First page: "To make a long story short, please don't take this review as a shootout, but as a look at different concepts and options."
Last page: "Its performance is so impressive and so consistent across all of the benchmark categories that we have no choice but to declare the ioDrive this shootout's performance winner."
What?
I'm actually not too impressed. For how much these things currently cost, they should be 10x faster than current SATA SSDs. It looks like more like 3x though. Still nothing to laugh at, but I think they have a long way to go still.
you really should have tested iodrive OCTAL. that would kick ass this shitty pci-e ssd's. Also you should have compared with ramdisks.
Ramdisk speed are like 7000 mb/s + if i remmember... I doubt ssd or pci ssd will come close to a loyal benchmark.
SATA has no future, eventually will be replace with PCIe in some other maybe form of connector.
Is not possible to install games in a Fusion-io board? I´ve always thought it was possible to install the games on the Fusion-io and the OS on a standard SSD.
This test is seriously flawed. The LSI had 6 SSDs in RAID on one card. The ioDimms were stand-alone. They (ioDimms) scale linearly across all performance metrics as you raid them together. Stick an ioDuo drive in there and you will literally get twice the performance on a single slot (and beat your six raided drives in all metrics). Stick 2 duos in the PCIe bus and you will get 4x the performance. You can't do that with spinning disks and you can't do that with SSDs--you get diminishing returns and non-linearities. Can't boot? It doesn't matter so much. Keep all your caches, game files, applications, scratch disks, and indexes on the fusion cards and you'll be blown away. You should have pointed out how weak the LSI card was in reality. The larger capacity for that card was, in reality, multiple drives raided together on a single card. Big deal, you could do that with an ioOctal and have 8x performance over a single ioDimm. These other drives just don't stack up against the ioDimms. Agreed, the price point isn't for the enthusiast, but in an enterprise scenario, what you can do with an Fusion-io setup is simply amazing. Furthermore, you didn't even get into a discussion about how important latency is, or the wear life of the drives. Those are other places where Fusion-io is way way out in front FTW.
that's all well and good but who cares?http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30 [...] r-than-fl/
Nice, but there are limitations on the theoretical limits of copper and current limitations on the pcie bus. It's all about how fast you can feed the processor and with how little latency. Yes, this is great, but it's how you deploy the technology on existing infrastructure that will matter (until that infrastructure catches up).
I'm actually not too impressed. For how much these things currently cost, they should be 10x faster than current SATA SSDs. It looks like more like 3x though. Still nothing to laugh at, but I think they have a long way to go still.
I agree. The speed is interesting but not what it should be. Im thinking these cards also need a large RAM cache to make use of the PCI bus speeds and then let the SSDs work in the background -just like the high performance hard drive cards do. The controllers dont seem to be optimized for PCI-bus level speeds.
No RAM cache is involved. You're either on the PCIe bus or not. Tom's has a diagram on one of these pages explaining the setup.
SATA has no future, eventually will be replace with PCIe in some other maybe form of connector.
LightPeak will replace SATA.
Nice, but there are limitations on the theoretical limits of copper and current limitations on the pcie bus. It's all about how fast you can feed the processor and with how little latency. Yes, this is great, but it's how you deploy the technology on existing infrastructure that will matter (until that infrastructure catches up).
Exactly. Not to mention in an non compressible truly random scenario, those Sandforce Controller wont be that much faster in Random Write. And all the funny things happen with Sandforce controller. Consistency is much more important. Fusion - IO truly wins this test with a technology that is now nearly 4 years old.
My PC boots up in 8 seconds to the password prompt. It's soooooo slowwwww..
$110.00 for a 60GB SATA2 Mushkin. 240MB/sec both ways. Really: I love it!
"Three PCI Express-Based SSDs: When SATA 6 Gb/s Is Too Slow"
Then why are you comparing these PCI Express SSD's to SATA @ 3 Gb/s?
Seriously big flaw in your tests here.