OCZ Technology today revealed it's new RevoDrive PCI-Express SSD, which crams two SandForce-equipped MLC NAND SSDs--configured for a RAID 0 array--onto a single PCB. The company claims that it moves beyond the bottleneck of SATA II (3 Gbps) by incorporating a 4x PCI-E interface. The result is a solution that cranks out speeds over 500 MB/s reads and random small writes of up to 80,000 IOPS.
So, will this new RevoDrive come cheap? You know it won't. OCZ will initially offer two flavors--120 GB and 240 GB capacities, costing $389.99 and $699.99 respectively. Both versions will also be bootable, promising quicker boot-ups, load times, and faster computing. Unlike HDDs, the RevoDrive is quiet, a lot cooler, and more energy efficient than its clunky, mechanical counterparts.
"The RevoDrive is the first PCIe SSD that delivers both performance and affordability and radically alters the SSD landscape," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "Up to this point, PCIe SSDs have been reserved for enterprise applications and priced out of the range of many consumers. The bootable RevoDrive SSD changes the game by delivering a PCIe based solution that costs as low as $3 per gigabyte, exceptional small file write IOPS of over 80K, which is the most available in any low-cost solution."
Both are available for purchase, however Amazon lists them with prices quite a bit higher than what OCZ indicated. For the 120 GB version (opens in new tab), the price is $459.20 and is currently listed as "out of stock." The 240 GB SSD (opens in new tab) pricetag is even scarier: $806.40 and also listed as "out of stock." Neither TigerDirect nor Newegg--both specified as OCZ online retailers--had the SSDs listed.