# Are we there yet? (New SSDs)



## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 1, 2011)

http://www.macworld.com/article/158216/2011/03/intelssd.html (http://www.macworld.com/article/158216/ ... elssd.html)

SSDs with 6Gbps throughput.

(Are those gigabits or gigabytes? Oy.)


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## adg21 (Mar 1, 2011)

haven;t 6Gbps SSDs been out for a while, or am I wrong?


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## chimuelo (Mar 1, 2011)

Yes they have but Intel just got smacked by the SF-2500 controller SSD's by OCZ and Fusion I/O, so they had to respond.
If it wasn't for smaller companies like AMD, NVidia and Asus, we'd have 1000 USD CPU's, 500 USD RAM, and 500 USD motherboards.

Intel has been way ahead of everyone in most technological sectors, and only release their products when market pressure dictates.

I used a 1GHz Coppermine w/ Gigasampler for as many years as I could just because the CPU cost me 1 large back in '99....... >8o


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 2, 2011)

I hear the latest generation OCZs are very good - any comments / experiences?


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## NYC Composer (Apr 3, 2011)

Older mac pros don't have the SATA 3 spec, right? Necessary to purchase one of those 50 buck PCIe cards?


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## Simon Ravn (Apr 4, 2011)

NYC Composer @ Mon Apr 04 said:


> Older mac pros don't have the SATA 3 spec, right? Necessary to purchase one of those 50 buck PCIe cards?



Even the new (current) Mac Pro's are not 6gbps SATA. It's really silly.


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 4, 2011)

Not wanting to rub it in to 3gb SATA-stuck Mac friends, but would be curious for comments on these benchmarks:

http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_3_review_240gb

I'd have thought for sample streaming, these drives should be absolutely incredible, blowing away all-comers. But I know enough to know I don't know very much about SSDs, so keen for more expert comments!

I'm looking to put a system together later this month, probably basing it on a 2600k, asus sabertooth m/board. It's only 16gb of RAM right now, but that will double with the next gen of RAM chips. I'm also thinking that with these SSDs, the VIs can use more DFD streaming and keep the RAM use proportionately low, so the RAM should go a lot further (?) Maybe K4's purge and background loading would be so efficient on these SSDs it might be worth never loading fully into RAM at all (except for Time Machine patches etc of course).


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## Simon Ravn (Apr 4, 2011)

noiseboyuk, these benchmarks are of course synthetic, but still impressive How much improvement SATA3 gives over SATA2 in real world applications remain to be seen. But if the sample players are efficient enough to take advantage of such high speeds, it'll be nice. Also notice that the random read speeds are not better than on SATA2.

Regarding RAM usage, often that is hardcoded into the sample players so you can't change the pre-load buffer yourself - although I know that in Kontakt you can set a global buffer size that will be used for all samples programs. Still, I think it will pay off to have a fairly standard preload buffer of 16-32kb per sample. But it reamins to be seen of those next gen SSD's can push the limits in that area as well.


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## bluejay (Apr 4, 2011)

I'm using an SSD in my PC slave with only 3Gbps and the improvements have been dramatic. Personally I feel for digital orchestration the vastly-reduced seek speed is the biggest reason for such performance improvements, more than the actual throughput rates. Of course that's just my opinion and I could be wrong.


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## Simon Ravn (Apr 4, 2011)

bluejay, that's probably right. Those <1 ms. seek speeds are really helping.


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 4, 2011)

Simon Ravn @ Mon Apr 04 said:


> noiseboyuk, these benchmarks are of course synthetic, but still impressive How much improvement SATA3 gives over SATA2 in real world applications remain to be seen. But if the sample players are efficient enough to take advantage of such high speeds, it'll be nice. Also notice that the random read speeds are not better than on SATA2.
> 
> Regarding RAM usage, often that is hardcoded into the sample players so you can't change the pre-load buffer yourself - although I know that in Kontakt you can set a global buffer size that will be used for all samples programs. Still, I think it will pay off to have a fairly standard preload buffer of 16-32kb per sample. But it reamins to be seen of those next gen SSD's can push the limits in that area as well.



I'm getting a little carried away with the potential of these drives! Of course, near the bottom of those benchmarks were some (simulated) real world tests too, where it also flew.

Seems to me - being a little ignorant of course - the potential for sample playback is even greater than those real world tests though. Isn't it mainly sequential playback and access times that are most important? Read access time of 0.138 ms... that's nearly x100 faster than a regular sata drive! So yeah - getting that preload buffer down on Kontakt looks highly doable. I see - in theory - it goes down to 6kb! I realise I am now firmly in the area of wild speculation, but that would be a 10 fold reduction in RAM use. The main problem I can see with that - even if the SSDs are rock solid - is that you'd need EVERYTHING to come off SSD, I don't think (?) you can switch this value per-instance if you needed some sample streaming off a conventional sata. Not sure about tweeking VSL's player, and Play is already on its minimum for me I see.

More tests here - 

http://www.myce.com/review/ocz-vertex-3 ... clusion-8/

All positives and no negatives!

EDIT - cross posted re the access time comments above.


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## Simon Ravn (Apr 4, 2011)

noiseboyuk @ Mon Apr 04 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Mon Apr 04 said:
> 
> 
> > noiseboyuk, these benchmarks are of course synthetic, but still impressive How much improvement SATA3 gives over SATA2 in real world applications remain to be seen. But if the sample players are efficient enough to take advantage of such high speeds, it'll be nice. Also notice that the random read speeds are not better than on SATA2.
> ...



I don't think so. It'll be random access all the way, unless you only stream ONE sample Remember, it has to stream, say, 700 samples at the same time, which means it'll be accessing all over the "disk" all the time. Sequential speeds are an indication of writing or reading one longer file, e.g. copying from one disk to another.


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## OLB (Apr 4, 2011)

I thought this is a very helpful graphic: 

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/sto ... 3/read.jpg

what I understood from SvK is that the most important thing to look at for streaming samples are the 16kb and 64kb random reads. 

So I guess the Vertex 3 is inferior to the Crucial but not too much.


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## Synesthesia (Apr 4, 2011)

Interesting...

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index ... uct_id=190


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 4, 2011)

Simon Ravn @ Mon Apr 04 said:


> I don't think so. It'll be random access all the way, unless you only stream ONE sample Remember, it has to stream, say, 700 samples at the same time, which means it'll be accessing all over the "disk" all the time. Sequential speeds are an indication of writing or reading one longer file, e.g. copying from one disk to another.



That makes sense (I did say I was ignorant!) Fortunately it looks like the random access times are even faster...


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## Mike Connelly (Apr 4, 2011)

It's been discussed in other threads as well - for sample streaming the key numbers may be the random reads, and the smaller chunks. If that's the case then these drives (and even SATA III versus II) may not make much difference. It's possible that sample streaming actually does saturate a 300 meg bus in some situations, but I'm skeptical until I see data backing that up.

I definitely think that the software and plugins are a major factor as well (some more than others). There's probably still a fair amount of room for optimization on the software side to use SSD to its fullest potential.


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 4, 2011)

So no practical difference between them for sample users?


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## SvK (Apr 4, 2011)

Right........you're going to have serious difficulty bottlenecking the SATA2 ports if your streaming samples...

THE BIG STREAMING FIGURES APPLY TO VIDEO EDITING.

sample streaming is all about random reads of small chunks NOT big chunks....
SSD's are insanely good at just that: Random reads of small chunks....

SvK


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 4, 2011)

SvK @ Mon Apr 04 said:


> Right........you're going to have serious difficulty bottlenecking the SATA2 ports if your streaming samples...
> 
> THE BIG STREAMING FIGURES APPLY TO VIDEO EDITING.
> 
> ...



OK. So with these benchmarks (already linked) - http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_3_review_240gb - the most relevant ones are the random transfers read 4k ones? There are several charts on that, and I have little idea what the differences are. The summary seems to be in those tests - and those alone - the Vertex 3 comes considerably below the Corsair C300. Does that make the C300 still the best choice for streaming, then?


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## SvK (Apr 4, 2011)

trhe C300 kicks but...of relevan ce are random reads from 4k to 128k........

I use a OZC Revo Drive in my PC and c300s in my MAC.....



1000 bucks gets you a 360gig REVO drive ...Ive been using it for 2.5 weeks now.....performs great.

C300s perform just as good, but you'll need 3x128gigers for Hollywood strings, which price wise is almost a 1000 so why not just get the RevoDrive for 200bucks more right?

The RevoDrive is 4x80gig SSDs mounted on a PCIe card with a built on RAID controller!!

thing kicks serious ass...and you take up ZERO drive bays...just plop it in and away you go...

Best advice John G ever gave me.

best,
SvK


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## SvK (Apr 4, 2011)

BUY THIS:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodr ... s-ssd.html

SvK


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## noiseboyuk (Apr 5, 2011)

SvK @ Tue Apr 05 said:


> BUY THIS:
> 
> http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodr ... s-ssd.html
> 
> SvK



If you have the slots (the case I'm looking at has 7), what's the advantage of this over a new single bigger drive?

Been looking at benchmarks on other sites. Looks to me like overall the Vertex 3 IS as good or better as a C300 over the range of smaller chunks actually.


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## chimuelo (Apr 5, 2011)

Pester your favorite developer to use compression techniques like NCW.
Its a win-win for them as you could purchase more instruments instead of peripherrals to run these massive instruments.

Kontakt 4.2.2 is working so well and compressing even my older instruments I look forward to a single SSD 256GB on a 12GB laptop, and when duty calls an eSATA SSD 1U rack can hold several cheap 128GB's if need be.

I know LASS Lite is probably laughable to most String lovers here, but I can use 4 x Instrument banks and load the entire library using a meger 1.27 GB.
My needs are mobility, low costs and realtime use. Much different than most folks.
But my dream is around the corner as I have heard LASS Full and future upgrades will also be NCW.
So 4GB's for an entire String Instrument, 2-3 more for percussion and woodwinds, 1-2 more for Brass and the rest for Pianos, etc.
Realtime access and fast loads too.
My entire template for live work loads while I wash my hands now.
So if you dont see any gains with SSD's I can assure you they work fine with NCW.
They were made to use w/ 4.2.2.


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## SvK (Apr 5, 2011)

Noise,

Bigger drive?

The Revo comes in sizes ranging from 80gig to 900gig.
I own the 360gig version for 1000$

Either way is good. Revo is nice and tidy. 
BTW: Vision DAW use PCIe based SSDS from OCZ in their HS turnkey solutions.

PS: concerning HS owners weeping......i smile ear to ear everytime I hear my strings 

Anyway I"ve posted a whole truckload of info on this site concerning SSDs...Ive been around the block with them now...I know what worx and what doesn't and why.....

I hope you guys get something out of my trials and tribulations......C300 worx great and have been around a while (so no surprises with them)and so do REVOs.....RAID cards for audio sample streaming do nothing as we are reading small chunks not gig ones, and SSDs ARE a big advantage for streaming in MAC's even now......




best,
SvK


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## studioj (Apr 4, 2012)

sorry I know this is an old thread.... but it appears this revodrive can be had for $399 from amazon right now. as they have a new version (the X2) that sports 740 MB/sec reads that goes for a grand. at $399, seems like a good value for HWS, yes? I know a crucial M4 can get similar performance, but getting this PCIe card frees up your sata 3 connects for other libraries... SvK, you still recommending the revo? 

thx-
j


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## Gusfmm (Apr 4, 2012)

I don't think these have had much success out there. Plus they had their bit of issues on boot up, etc.

Have you ever looked at a PCIe-based RAID card? It'd accomplish the same you're looking for, and be much more cost effective in the end. Don't look at cheapo cards, look at LSI.com (they now own the former 3ware), and they manufacture most of the Intel branded cards as well. Market leader. You can get a great 4-port 6Gb/s RAID card for +/-$250, then add SSD drives at your convenience.


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## adg21 (Apr 4, 2012)

studioj @ Wed Apr 04 said:


> sorry I know this is an old thread.... but it appears this revodrive can be had for $399 from amazon right now. as they have a new version (the X2) that sports 740 MB/sec reads that goes for a grand. at $399, seems like a good value for HWS, yes? I know a crucial M4 can get similar performance, but getting this PCIe card frees up your sata 3 connects for other libraries... SvK, you still recommending the revo?
> 
> thx-
> j



which one?


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## studioj (Apr 4, 2012)

adg21 @ Wed Apr 04 said:


> which one?



the 360 gb PCIe 4x

thx for the info on the raid cards. I guess if reliability is an issue that would be a good way to go. but the $ outlay is quite a bit more. is the failure rate on the revo's unusually high? at this point I'm just looking for something to put HWS on for a new PC slave. size and price seem to be optimal on this older revo.


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## Gusfmm (Apr 4, 2012)

Why not using regular SSD's on the SATA ports then? 

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing though. 

- A 360GB SSD Revodrive like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227662
...is over $1,000.

- A good PCIe RAID card is around $300. Add two 240GB SSD drives in RAID 0 for 480GB and around $600. Way better and cheaper solution if you asked me...


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## studioj (Apr 4, 2012)

Gusfmm @ Wed Apr 04 said:


> Why not using regular SSD's on the SATA ports then?
> 
> I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing though.
> 
> ...



the amazon deal for 399 is on the older revodrive not the X2. also to consider is the physical space the separate ssd's will take in the case. but agreed that would be a better solution if cost and space weren't an issue. which maybe they aren't so I may go that direction. Thanks for your input!


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## JohnG (Apr 4, 2012)

I haven't had any trouble with my PCIe RAID booting up or actually at all. 

However, if one of the SSDs housed on it were to go out, you have to send the whole thing back to get it replaced. So it may not be the best for everyone.


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## studioj (Apr 4, 2012)

Here's the amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WUX26E/ref=ox_ya_os_product (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WU ... os_product)

Even though it's last year's model it still seems like a good value for Hollywood Strings. This is the one SvK is using, right?


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## studioj (Apr 4, 2012)

after browsing some threads, it looks like this is not the version that has been referred to on this forum... SvK has the X2... John G, which PCIe raid drive do you have?


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## chimuelo (Apr 5, 2012)

THere's a new OCZ Vetez 4 using a new Everst 2 Controller that has incredibly high Random reads. 33% above every Sand Force based controller out there, and Intel has the new 330 series that are larger and cheaper.
Just when I was about to buy these bacame available, so now I wait again.
I don't want any RAID though. If the rebuild times were unnoticable I would, but no serious DAW work can be done during a rebuild.
So I just like more drives, smaller sizes.
But it's the competition I am seeing right now that makes me wait.
It could drive prices down on SSDs that work just fine and dont need the highest Random Read scores....


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## studioj (Apr 5, 2012)

Hey Gusfmm- I'm gonna go with 3x Crucial M4 128's on the on-board SATA3 ports in RAID 0, and see where that gets me. Less than half the price of the revo X2 and should give similar performance... and I have plenty of room in the case. I'm using the Asrock board that has 6 sata3's so i've got some to spare. If performance is less than desirable I may opt for one of the raid cards you suggested, and that still puts me under what the revo costs like you said. Thanks much for your feedback!


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## EastWest Lurker (Apr 5, 2012)

Davi Newman's tech guy, George Leger, said that they found that you get better performance using a more but smaller SSDs than= larger ones. Does this make sense to anybody?


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## studioj (Apr 5, 2012)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Apr 05 said:


> Davi Newman's teach guy, George Leger, said that they found that you get better performance using a more but smaller SSDs than= larger ones. Does this make sense to anybody?



Yeah it seems some people are moving different mic positions to separate smaller drives and using junction link software tools to create 'aliases' for PLAY to reference.... but I spoke with east west tech support and they do not recommend this as it leads to complications when you need to update the library. So far their best recommend is multiple small drives in hardware raid 0.... which the revodrive is essentially. Thats why I guess it gives similar performance to having 3 or more m4's raided up. 

Hey Jay- I went to update my HWS content at the soundsonline website, and the link is giving me a '403 Forbidden' page. is there somewhere else I can download the latest update? btw I upgraded my gold to diamond and man those extra mic positions are super nice. I hope that the latest inst update is pretty extensive though, as after playing with it for only 10 min or so I came across a ton of wrong samples (like one RR would be an octave up, or one RR would have a loud sniff sound in it!)....i think mostly in the short patches. But my content/instruments are pretty outdated i think. Right now its still on my mac, should have the new PC together this weekend.


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## chimuelo (Apr 7, 2012)

I have been itching to buy an SSD Array. I have owned 2 over the last couple years, and just wasn't impressed as I have a Raptor Array and it seems thats all Kontakt and Gigastudio ever needed, but Raptors will last forever. I still have a Gigatudio/Scope DAW with Raptor 360s and they won't die, so I am going to take the latest 1500s and turn them into hot spares for 3 x new SSDs.
From what I see PLAY needs the most resources, then VSL then Kontakt.
But I think PLAY is maturing well enough to take a try at some of their stuff.
The Intel 520s using Sand Force controllers are the most stable, and thier new 330s are cheaper and faster.
But right when I was ready to grab a few, I see the Random Reads of the new Everest 2 controllers are incredible.

35% faster than anything else, and I am excited I dont have to buy a large drive for the best performance. They scale much less than anything else so that tells me the technology has really matured.
I saw similar benchmarks with 4k and a Que Deoth of 32 it has 90,000 I/Ops..... >8o The largest drive has the most but not nearly as scaled as other SSDs.
This means 3 x 128GB Vertex 4 SSDs 525 USD from TigerDirect and probably Newegg too.
The Sequential Reads are 535MBps, same speed as the other sizes too.

I think the time to but is now. Even though Intel SSDs are mission critical and never get BSOD, the Everest 2 Controllers are really leaving everything else in the dust with the Random Reads, and on par with the fastest in Seq. Reads.


http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_4_ssd_review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5719/ocz- ... 56gb-512gb


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## EastWest Lurker (Apr 7, 2012)

studioj @ Thu Apr 05 said:


> Hey Jay- I went to update my HWS content at the soundsonline website, and the link is giving me a '403 Forbidden' page. is there somewhere else I can download the latest update? btw I upgraded my gold to diamond and man those extra mic positions are super nice. I hope that the latest inst update is pretty extensive though, as after playing with it for only 10 min or so I came across a ton of wrong samples (like one RR would be an octave up, or one RR would have a loud sniff sound in it!)....i think mostly in the short patches. But my content/instruments are pretty outdated i think. Right now its still on my mac, should have the new PC together this weekend.



Email this to me please.


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## Gusfmm (Apr 8, 2012)

Studio- You can't go wrong with those Crucial, and three in RAID 0 should fly. Let know how you make out.


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## studioj (Apr 8, 2012)

Gusfmm @ Sun Apr 08 said:


> Studio- You can't go wrong with those Crucial, and three in RAID 0 should fly. Let know how you make out.




thx! just got this puppy fired up actually... so to RAID those drives, do all three have to be on the same RAID controller on the MB? the MB has 2x intel sata3 ports, 2x Marvel 9220 sata3 ports and 4x Marvel 9172 sata3 ports (and 4 intel sata 2 ports). Right now I have them connected to the first 3 9172 ports and have those set to RAID in bios... i assume thats the way to fly. but I think those controllers are a little slower than the 9220 and intel. 
but probably with 3 drives, it won't be a substantial difference.


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## studioj (Apr 8, 2012)

So its looking like you can't put more than two drives in a raid array using the onboard controllers... Its not really '4 marvel 9172 ports' its actually 2x marvel 9172 controllers, each with 2 ports. ugh. So I may have to get that raid card after all. anybody run into this with onboard controllers? maybe I'm missing something.


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## Gusfmm (Apr 8, 2012)

Not sure what your MoBo is, but you certainly can't RAID across different controllers. Did you try putting them on the 4 port Marvel? That should work. Move DVD's, individual HD, etc to the other controllers if need be to make space for the 3 Crucial on the same controller. Hope that works.


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## studioj (Apr 8, 2012)

Asrock Extreme9

So after some research, it seems that it cannot do a raid array of more than 2 drives across the marvel controllers because it is actually '3' controllers of 2 ports each, as opposed to a 2 port and a 4 port. 
Someone claims that you can use the intel sata controllers to do a larger raid array but then it will be limited to the 3G speed... 

BUT i also picked up 2x 256gb m4's, and just did a RAID 0 on the marvel 9220 controller with those (for a 512 partition) and I'm getting 720 MB/sec reads on the larger block sizes. I guess its the smaller ones that are important, but that is telling me something anyway so I think I'm in business with those. That should be comparable performance to the revodrive X2.


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## JohnG (Apr 8, 2012)

studioj @ 4th April 2012 said:


> after browsing some threads, it looks like this is not the version that has been referred to on this forum... SvK has the X2... John G, which PCIe raid drive do you have?



It's the p88 z-drive


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## chimuelo (Apr 10, 2012)

Could you imagine the Supermicro mobo with 4 x PCI-e 8X Slots and 4 of those chugging along at 1.4GBps......... >8o


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## adg21 (Apr 10, 2012)

It's 2.8GBps now which is ludicrous
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/800gb-oc ... cie-20-(x8)-sandforce-2281-mlc-flash-read


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## Gusfmm (Apr 10, 2012)

These new r4 OCZ z-drives are really not intended to be a consumer product, but enterprise (thus cost = x 5). Yes, the technology may be there and continue evolving rapidly, but the issue will be, or continue being, affordability for the regular consumer. Same issue as with the Revo's and their low success.


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