OCZ RevoDrive 350 PCIe SSD Review (480GB) – LSI SandForce Driven Once Again

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

SSD Testing at TSSDR differs slightly depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise SSDs.  For consumer SSDs, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, although CPU C States have may or may not have been optimized depending on the motherboard base configuration. Benchmarks for consumer testing are also benchmarks with a fresh drive so, not only can we verify that manufacturer specifications are in line but also, so the consumer can replicate our tests to confirm that they have an SSD that is top-notch.  We even provide links to most of the benchmarks used in the report.

 

This report of the OCZ RevoDrive 350 PCIe SSD is our first opportunity to run an SSD through our newest build, a dual AMD/Intel PC that is an amazing 5 feet in height.  Although this drive is only being tested with our Intel Bench, one might be interested in checking out our Test Bench Report that fully describes this Bench.  As for our methodology, we will be testing the RevoDrive 350 in a way that best suits the consumer, however, we will also include some true transfer speed tests to assist.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project.  Our choice of components is very narrow, in that, we choose only what we believe to be among the best available and links are provided to each that will assist in hardware pricing and availability, should the reader be interested in purchase.

PC CHASSIS:	Cooler Master HAF Stacker 935 EATX
MOTHERBOARD:	ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac EATX MotherBoard
CPU:	Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz Quad Core
CPU COOLER:	Cooler Master Seidon 120M
POWER SUPPLY:	Cooler Master V1000
SYSTEM COOLING:	Cooler Master 120mm Red and Green Fans
GRAPHICS CARD:	EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked with ACX Cooler
MEMORY:	Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer Memory
KEYBOARD:	CM Storm QuickFire XT – Limited Edition
MOUSE:	CM Storm Sentinel Advance 2
MOUSE PAD:	CM Storm Control-RX Large Gaming Mouse Pad
6x MOBILE RACK	Icy Dock ToughArmor 6x SATA/SAS HDD/SSD
4x MOBILE RACK	Icy Dock ToughArmor 4x SATA/SAS HDD/SSD
DISPLAY MONITOR	QNIX QX2710 27″ 2560×1440 Display Monitor
DUAL MONITOR MOUNT	Rosewill Dual 27″ Monitor Mount
MONITOR WALL MOUNT	Rosewill RMS-MA3210 Wall Mount

 

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Info, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD and PCMark Vantage. In consumer reports, we prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

In addition to the standard tests, we have also included transfer speed testing with 25GB ISO, Program and Game files.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 2.46

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256MB and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

Listed specs of 1.8GB/s read and 1.7GB/s write are both bettered with our initial ATTO Disk Benchmark results.  If you do a bit of a comparison to a typical notebook SSD, you might note that smaller file transfer speeds are a bit better for the notebook SSD up until the 16K file size, at which time transfer speeds go through the roof for the Revo.