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OCZ has listed specifications of the Z-R4 at an amazing 440,000 IOPS at 4K-QD128 (8GB LBA) so we decided it only fair to recreate this exactly. With the test file at 8GB, results will be obtained without cache leverage. For the test procedure, we set IOMeter up with two managers, each manager having two workers and wanted to take advantage of the Intel i7-2600 as it is a multi-core processor. Four workers would be working simultaneously which would require the use of four cores.
OCZ Z-DRIVE R4 1.6TB PCI EXPRESS SSD
FUSION-IO IODRIVE DUO 640GB PCI EXPRESS SSD
ANALYSIS
Although we didn’t quite reach 440,000 IOPS, we have to admit that reaching 414,515 IOPS was something else. Pushing it this hard also required additional precautionary fans strategically placed around the card to keep her happy. This round was a tough call as the Z-R4 was clearly the winner in its transfer speed of 1697MB/s while the io-D was the clear victor in its speedy IO Response time of 5ms. The decision went to the Z-R4 though as 414,515 IOPS simply cannot be overlooked.
From a personal perspective, I can just imagine testing this card with two SuperScale Storage Controllers configured which changes its specs to over 5GB/s read and write with well over a million IOPS! Hey OCZ… we think there needs to be such a test done!
ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES MIXED TESTIING
We thought it only fair to do a bit of testing in Anvil to see if we could find a specific benchmark that really set these drives apart. We found that in mixed read/write tests at 4k-QD64 and we believe that you might even agree that the Z-R4 truly shined in this specific benchmark:
Would be more fair if you compared it to the 1.28 TiB variant of the Duo.
Brilliant article none the less…
I agree totally but we have to work with the hardware that we have access to. As for the compliment of it being a brilliant article, totally unexpected and thank you very much.
“we have to work with the hardware that we have access to”
OK, so you have access to the fastest OCZ hardware but not the fastest FIO hardware…and this makes for a subjective test? Seriously? When do you expect to have current hardware for live testing? Any chance we might get actual server-side testing to show off the true strength of FIO hardware and, more importantly, software? Oh wait, then we couldn’t have a test could we…you’d need a competitor other than OCZ….
WE would be pleased to hear suggestions as to other sources of competition for the card. Thanks ahead.
not sure why the harsh response or love affair with Fusion. Why do you care which company? I say Fusion should put up the hardware like OCZ and do real life tests within applications. Both companies can put there money where their mouth is.
Harsh response? Love affair? I guess I am a bit confused because, well, myself, when I read an article I want to know the reviewers opinion and feelings just as much as I do facts alone. This is what keeps my interest.
It is also an important factor to help the reader. Take for instance the stuttering 602 controller a few years back. Can you imagine a reviewer saying, ” The drive stalls and stutters a bit but is still a large step up from a hard drive” Say it like it is I believe and hope our fellow members feel the same.
Thank you for taking the time to respond and expressing your feelings.
This is subjective because the z-drive r4 is cheaper than the FIO drive.
You find it subjective because one performs alot better yet is alot cheaper? How so?
Please update using the ioDrive 2 they just released, also
Finally SSDs start approaching the RAM speeds. Not very useful yet for the regular users without deep pockets. So meantime we still get 2-5 times of these speeds with software based QSoft RAMDrive and, thanks to DRAM price drop, at the $5/GB. While many even never heard of that but we are enjoying such crazy RAMDrives’ speeds for our apps for almost a quarter of century since the DOS times.
Suggestion to authors – test it just for fun. The latest QSoft Enterprise edition or one of Romex Software have a lot of nice functions allowing to auto backup the RAMdrive and load it back when you switch on and off your computer. Yes it might be lost if PC crash if you do not autobackup things, but this typically never happen, It is not for servers or critically important files but in its turn it is soooooo much faster and is eternal (well, lifetime guarantee) and no wearing off, TRIM, problems with compressed or 4K files.
I do not know while similar board designs of RAMDrives as these two SSDs are not making its road to the world (with just the battery backups) – they are so much faster t yet
nice review. I like both of these companies, but I think you need to compare the iodrive II DUO if you really want to compare head to head what each manufacture would put against another. Another addition that would be nice is to see performance of actual work like indexed data using lucene. What is the performance gain on these working enviornments.
We have been in contact with FusionIO during CES and just may be able to appease your request soon enough.
OCZ Z-R5 is also coming
Sorry, but thinking this through HP should donate some equipment or Dell as well as updating the cards and also add tests of real applications to see performance gains. This was a great article none the less. Thank You
“Is there really a need for anything that fast?” with 4 dual GPUs being used for CUDA/OPenCl application you do need even more than what is being provided to keep the GPUs filled with data with bottleneck.