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Test PC and testing procedures
Test machine
For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 (Intel P55 chipset)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 750
- RAM: 4GB GEIL Ultra Line DDR3 2133MHz (dual channel)
- GFX: Sapphire Vapor X HD 5770 (1024 Megabytes GDDR5 HDCP compliant)
- Sound: Onboard Realtek ALC889 HD audio controller
- Hard disk OS: 100GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD
- Hard disk storage: 1X 500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3, and 1X 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1.
- Case: Antec 900
- PSU: Enermax Liberty 620W
- Display: Samsung Syncmaster 245B 24” widescreen LCD (HDCP compliant)
- Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
The OCZ RevoDrive X2 SSD was installed into the second PCIe x16 socket on our review PC, and all tests were carried out the RevoDrive X2 connected to this socket.
Test applications
To test the performance of the OCZ RevoDrive X2 PCIe SSD, we will be using the following test applications in this review.
Test procedures
We will start off our testing procedures explanation by stating that we did not run many basic benchmarks on the OCZ RevoDrive X2 series drive. You may ask why we have run so few benchmarks?
SSD technology has moved so fast in the last couple of years, that basic benchmarks alone are now of very limited use, and don’t really tell us much about performance and how the drive will behave in the real world. We have therefore decided to show some basic benchmarks of the OCZ RevoDrive X2 drive, and will complement this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. We will also show how the OCZ RevoDrive X2 performs in the real world with our MyCE Reality Suite test.
Test drives
- 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD (firmware 1.5)
- 120GB OCZ Apex SSD
- 500GB Samsung SpinPoint F3 (HD502HJ)
- 64GB Traxdata Ultra S Plus SSD
- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
- OCZ Agility 120GB (firmware 1.5)
- Intel X25-M 80GB (series G1)
- OCZ Vertex 2 100GB
- Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB SSD (only used in some tests, as it arrived too late for all tests)
- OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB PCIe SSD
The OCZ RevoDrive X2 SSD came supplied with firmware version 1.20
Reviewers note
We were only able to test with the WD Velociraptor HDD for a very short time, in fact, only enough time to run the IOMeter tests.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the drives used in this review were in a "used state" with the exception of the OCZ RevoDrive X2 and the Intel X25-M. To simulate a "used state" on the OCZ RevoDrive X2, we completely filled the drive with files then deleted all the files, repeating this procedure five times. The Intel X25-M was stuck with a sequential writing speed of only 36MB/s, and with no TRIM support and little point of carrying out tests on a drive in this state, a secure erase was performed to recover the performance before testing began.
- Both our spinning HDD drives were defragged before the start of each test.
- All SSD and HDD drives had their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.
Where we use graphs in this article to display results, we will use the following colours to make it easier, for our readers to see the drive which we are reviewing.
OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB PCIe SSD
Comparison SSD
Comparison HDD
Now let’s head to the next page, where we look at some basic benchmarks…
