OCZ RevoDrive 350 PCIe SSD 480GB Review

Rating: 9.5.

It has been three years since we looked at the OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB – at the time it was the fastest SSD that the desktop audience could buy. As it connected via the PCI Express interface it wasn't a victim of the SATA bottleneck, which is still a problem in 2014. Today we look at the latest RevoDrive 350, developed and released by Toshiba owned OCZ to deliver performance levels well in excess of anything possible from the SATA 3 interface.

OCZ have based the RevoDrive 350 on their enterprise level Z-Drive 4500 – a performance leader popular in the professional sector. The new drive also incorporates Toshiba NAND memory, an obvious move since OCZ were acquired by Toshiba a short while ago.

OCZ are releasing the RevoDrive 350 in three different storage capacities: a 240GB unit, a 480GB unit and a 960GB unit. UK pricing has yet to be confirmed however American prices are set at $530, $830 and $1,300 respectively. Using a currency converter today, the $830 RRP for the 240GB version comes in at £495. Adding 20% UK VAT to this price, brings it up to around £594. We can expect the drive to cost around £599.99 inc vat when it hits the United Kingdom. Paying a premium for technology is one of the great ‘benefits' of living in the United Kingdom.

OCZ list the specifications of the 480GB and 960GB units as very closely matched, hitting peaks of 1,800MB/s read and 1,700 MB/s write. IOPS performance is also closely matched with random write IOPS performance rated at 140,000. That said, the 960GB unit has a higher rated 4K QD32 rated random read rating of 135,000 (versus 90,000). The smaller 240GB unit is significantly slower than either the 480GB or 960GB drive, hitting a maximum read speed of 1000MB/s and maximum write speed of 950 MB/s. Still, hardly slow.

The reason for the speed differences are due to the fact that the 240GB version only has two LSI Sandforce 2282 controllers, not four.


We love the gentle flowing blues and whites of the OCZ RevoDrive 350 box artwork. A lovely high resolution image of the drive itself takes pride of place. Strangely enough no mention of the size of the drive on the box – however we would expect this will change by the time they reach etailers.

The outer sleeve slides off to reveal another OCZ branded box finished with the white and blue stripes.

Inside, the drive is protected inside a clear plastic shell with plastic holders on either side isolating it from the box. Be careful to pay attention, as there is a mini CD in the box containing the driver. Without this driver the RevoDrive 350 will not work, so we did warn you.

The RevoDrive 350 is bootable incidentally, although the Windows OS install will ask for the RAID driver – this can be copied to a USB flash drive for easy access.

When the driver is installed and the RevoDrive 350 is formatted, there is 447GB free for storage duties.

The RevoDrive 350 is enclosed inside a metal chassis, shown above. This offers some protection for the front, however the rear of the PCB is still completely exposed. On a positive note, this means that the RevoDrive 350 won't hog up more than a single slot in any system.

The RevoDrive 350 measures 167.6mm x 98.4 x 15.3 mm (LxWxH). OCZ claim it is able to handle 50GB of writes per day for three years. The 480GB model is said to consume 9.5 watts at idle and 14 watts under load conditions.

The 480GB and 960GB versions of the RevoDrive 350 are based around four LSI SandForce 2281 controllers, which are connected internally by a four port OCZ RAID controller. The drive has full TRIM support which is a huge benefit. The unit also supports TCQ, NCQ, SMART monitoring, wear leveling and power failure management.

As we mentioned earlier in the review, the RevoDrive 350 is connected via a PCIe x8 connector, not the SATA connector. This eliminates the current SATA 3 600MB/s limitation (in real world terms after overheads, its closer to 560 MB/s maximum read and write).

The RevoDrive 360 uses the PCI Express 2.0 8x bus which in theory can offer speeds up to 4GB/s.

As this is a SandForce controlled drive, the data is compressed in real time. SF controllers will store a representation of the data and it can do this by using a partition of the available NAND flash memory. The SF-2281 controller can handle around 500 MB/s sequential write and read. The four controllers are set into two pairs – with two partitions configured as RAID 0. Each pair can handle 1GB/s – when combined this is increased to 2GB/s. Yes, that is a theoretical maximum speed of 2 Gigabytes per second.

The Virtualised Controller Architecture provides a multifaceted virtualisation layer that can interface with the host system. This helps to extend NAND flash life at a block level and to help manage redundancy.

This is the other side of the chassis. We can see it doubles up as protection, and a cooler for specific areas on the PCB, including the controller.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.





For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main system:
Kitguru Test Rig 2

Compare system:
CPU: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit

Other Drives
OCZ Vertex 460 240GB
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
OCZ Vector 150 240GB
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB
Visiontek Racer Series 120GB
Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD Review (firmware 1.4 update)
Transcend SSD720 128GB
Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB
OCZ Octane 512GB (V1.13 fw)
Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120GB
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB
Samsung 830 Series 512GB
Patriot Pyro SE 240GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
MemoRight FTM Plus 240GB SSD
Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB
ADATA S511 240GB
Intel 510 120GB
Corsair F100 100GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB
MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

PCIe drives test system:
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SSD &
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalMark
AS SSD
PCMark 8
IOMeter

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.1 x64.

4K QD32 performance is astonishing and sets a new benchmark. Interestingly – we can see the previous leader in this test was the previous OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480 tested almost 3 years ago!

The controllers deal very well with compressible and incompressible data, as shown above. These are the best results we have ever seen, bar none.


Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed in the last year.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Nothing else comes close to the RevoDrive 350 480GB, it claims top spot in the ATTO Disk Benchmark, by a clear margin.


Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

AS SSD deals exclusively with incompressible data and this shows the performance of the RevoDrive 350 under more challenging situations. It claims the top position in this chart, like all the others – by a clear margin. Stellar results.

Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months.
IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary between the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.

IOPS performance is strong, although the 4k random read test we ran fell a little short of the 90,000 claims by OCZ. On the other hand, the 4K random write test outperformed the 140,000 claims by OCZ – hitting 167,108. Superb results.
The OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB is not only significantly faster than the OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2, but it has proven the fastest SSD drive we have ever tested.

The enthusiast audience has been dealing with the limitations of the SATA 3 interface for some time now. This 600MB/s limit has slowed down the move to faster drives, although that is going to change in the near future – but more on this at a later date.

The use of the PCI Express interface means that OCZ are able to bypass current SATA interface limitations.  There is no doubt that OCZ official claims are actually rather modest, claiming the drive will peak between 1700-1,800MB/s. Our ATTO drive testing today highlighted that the OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB was able to peak at close to 2GB/s (2000MB/s+) in both sequential read and write tests.

The Toshiba acquisition of OCZ has proven positive. The adoption of fast Toshiba NAND on the drives will ensure that pricing can be kept as competitive as possible. Additionally, the RevoDrive 350 480GB deals with incompressible and compressible data exceptionally well, meaning that this drive will suit a wide audience of enthusiast, semi professional and professional users.

There are only a handful of enthusiast grade competitors to the RevoDrive 350 right now. My colleague Luke Hill had a look at the ASUS RAIDR back in February and the performance isn't even close to the RevoDrive 350 we tested today. Granted, that was an engineering sample, but the speeds aren't likely to get much higher.

We can't verify long term reliability of the RevoDrive 350 just yet as our sample has only been tested over the last 3-4 days. OCZ seem confident however, they have asked KitGuru to hold onto this sample long term, and to report back on performance, or any possible issues every couple of months. We may therefore be following up on this review around the end of June 2014.

UK pricing of the RevoDrive 350 480GB has yet to be confirmed, but as we mentioned earlier, our educated guess, after VAT is likely to be around the £599.99 inc vat mark. There is no doubt this is a lot of money, however if you want to get as much performance as possible out of your system it proves very difficult to ignore.

OCZ say that the RevoDrive 350 should be available in the United Kingdom within the next couple of weeks. This is without question the fastest boot and system drive you could put in your system.

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Pros:

• Record breaking performance.
• looks great.
• doesn't require any power cables.
• significant improvement over the RevoDrive 3 X2.
• bypasses current SATA limitations.

Cons:

• £1.25 per GB.
• Not ideal if you use multiple graphics cards.
• 240GB unit looks to be significantly slower, so be careful.

Kitguru says: If you want the fastest system that money can buy you will want an OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB as the boot/OS drive.

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