RevoDrive 3 and Hybrid Highlight OCZ Showcase at Computex

Subject: Storage, Shows and Expos | June 1, 2011 - 08:37 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: ssd, revodrive, ocz, hybrid, computex

OCZ is definitely pushing its SSD products to the consumer and it was no different when we stopped by the OCZ suite at Computex 2011.  The most interesting devices came in the form of PCI Express based SSDs including the pending RevoDrive 3 model that upgrades the SSD controllers to SandForce 2200 models and gets some pretty hefty performance boosts because of it.

The RevoDrive 3 includes a pair of SF-2200 controllers and was rated at 900 MB/s read and 700 MB/s write using the PCIe x4 interface.  The 240GB model is apparently only going to have a $599 price tag and it should be available in a matter of a short few weeks.  The X2 model adds another module to the mix and doubles the controller count to four and improves performance to as high as 1500 MB/s read and 1200 MB/s write.  Obviously these types of devices are only for those that REALLY need to push the envelope in storage performance.

Also, more good news: OCZ has implemented a newer firmware feature on the RevoDrive 3 (and other newer PCIe based models) that will enable support for features like TRIM natively.  This is done by hiding the multiple controllers from the operating system and passing on / delegating the TRIM commands as needed.  Allyn will have more on this when we get a sample later this month.  

Another new PCIe-based SSD was the new Z-Drive R4 that fits more into the enterprise market with insanely high IOPS and performance. 

OCZ actually showed a server running a pair of the R4 88 models that were able to achieve a 1 million IOPS rating on random 4K. 

Another option for consumers was the new RevoDrive Hybrid that is exactly what it sounds like it is - a combination of a PCI Express SSD and a standard 2.5-in spindle based drive on a single unit.  This will bring the performance benefits of not only an SSD but a PCIE SSD to consumers that want to have the appearance of a single large hard drive inside their system.  It will use SandForce SF-2200 controllers and is rated at 575 MB/s read and 500 MB/s writes with several models planned for production.  The SSD portion that acts as the cache will be available in either 60GB of 120GB capacities while the HDD will start at 500GB and go up from there.  Pricing will apparently start at $400 for the 60GB/500GB version and will definitely be appealing for enthusiasts.  Now everyone can get the advantages of hybrid storage without being locked into the Z68 chipset or even an Intel platform at all. 

This implementation does not use any kind of Intel technology at all and instead is based on a firmware option from NVELO called Dataplex.  Based on the marketing numbers we saw the implementation that OCZ has created with the PCIe-based SSD will outperform Intel's SATA-based SRT technology by a noticeable margin, at least in benchmarks.  We can't wait to get our hands on one to see for ourselves. 

Finally, OCZ is going to throw their hat into the ring with the mSATA offering called the Devena 2 that runs on a SandForce SF-2181/2141 controller.  Expect to see this marketed as an option even for Intel SRT.  It looks like the rest of 2011 will be very busy for Allyn and our storage test bed.

Computex 2011 Coverage brought to you by MSI Computer and Antec

OCZ Achieves Performance Record Live At Computex, Over 1 Million 4K Write IOPS & 1.5 Million Read IOPS

Subject: General Tech, Storage, Shows and Expos | May 31, 2011 - 01:55 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: z-drive, PCIe SSD, ocz

TAIPEI, Taiwan - May 31, 2011 - OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, announces the Company has set a new benchmark of 1 million 4K write IOPS with a Z-Drive R4 equipped 3U Colfax International Server based on a Supermicro platform, which features 7.2TB of MLC storage.

As the fastest performing single server solution on the market, this Z-Drive R4 equipped platform significantly accelerates demanding transactional workloads and reduces latency across a broad array of enterprise applications.

"The Z-Drive R4 enables our data center clients to maximize performance in the industry standard 4K file size, and this achievement with Colfax International demonstrates the raw performance benefits and latency reductions that OCZ PCIe SSDs can deliver over multi-terabyte device densities in a single 3U server," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "We are proud to enable our clients to deliver servers and storage arrays which provide the highest performance, maximum capacity, and lowest latency available to data centers today."

"We have been working closely with OCZ to create a ready to deploy server solution with both exceptional performance and reliability, all within a compact and energy efficient footprint," said Gautam Shah, President and CEO of Colfax International. "OCZ's Z-Drive PCIe SSDs add considerable performance and we are thrilled to achieve this significant 4K Write IOPS benchmark, as well as making this industry leading total solution available to our enterprise clients."

This demonstration highlighted the Z-Drive R4's ability to offer industry-leading performance and efficiency for enterprise clients seeking the benefits of SSDs over hard drives. This total solution will be available for pre-order from Colfax International in multiple built-to-order configurations, and will ship in the coming weeks following the Computex event.

Computex 2011 Coverage brought to you by MSI Computer and Antec

A brief update on Computex

Subject: Graphics Cards, Shows and Expos | May 31, 2011 - 11:59 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: computex, computex 2011, ocz, Intel, Ivy Bridge

You may have noticed with the new look to PC Perspective have come several new features, such as tags to group common topics together to make it easier to find them.  The important tag right now is computex, which will group all of the news we have reported from Computex. 

Ryan is not the only attendee of the conference, so in order to ensure you have enough information to keep you satiated over the day you can take a look at AnandTech's coverage as well.  They spent time with OCZ, discussing the RevoDrive Hybrid, a standard 0.5/1TB platter based HDD and a Vertex 3 SSD on PCIe card, a form factor that Intel's SRT has made obsolete but is still interesting to see.  The new PCIe based Z-Drive on the other hand can do very impressive things, the R4 88 has eight SF-2281 controllers in RAID 0!  RevoDrives with TRIM support are also very nice to see.  Intel talked about both the upcoming Ivy Bridge platform as well as their plans for USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. 

Stay tuned for more.

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• AMD is the fourth WARM, Windows 8 tablet partner @ SemiAccurate
• What's Killing Your Wi-Fi? @ Slashdot
• Is Fedora 15 Faster Than Ubuntu 11.04? @ Phoronix
• Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX9 Review @ TechReviewSource
• The TR Podcast 88: Exposing the midrange
  

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• Apple drops secrecy, confirms iOS 5, iCloud on tap at WWDC 2011 @ Ars Technica
• Interview with Mark Doherty of Adobe @ t-break
• Bulldozer mobos from Asus and MSI: Sabertooth 990FX & 990FXA-GD80 @ The Tech Report
• The New Indilinx Everest SSD @ AnandTech
• A Quick Look at a 22nm Ivy Bridge Wafer @ AnandTech

With great power comes great efficiency; the OCZ ZX Series

Subject: Cases and Cooling | May 18, 2011 - 06:18 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: PSU, OCZ ZX Series, ocz, modular psu, 850W

OCZ's ZX series sport an 80+ Gold certification, making them the most power efficient of their lineups and very important when you are talking about an 850W PSU.  A 70A max single 12V rail for the four PCIe connectors is the stat most gamers want to know and the 140mm fan is important to those wanting a peaceful computing session.  What was most important to Think Computers about the 850W ZX Series PSU?  Read on to find out.

“OCZ has recently released its latest power supply offering in the ZX Series of power supplies. These power supplies effectively replace the Z Series power supplies in the Maximum Performance sector and off an 80 PLUS gold certification, a single +12V rail, modular design and an impressive 5 year warranty. 80 PLUS gold certification means this power supply will run 87% efficient at 100% load. 80 PLUS gold is the second highest certification given to power supplies only out-done by the 80 PLUS Platinum certification. Today we will be taking a look at the 850W version of the ZX Series power supply"

Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:

CASES & COOLING

• ADATA BN-550 Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets
• Mushkin Enhanced Joule 800 Watt @ Tweaktown
• Sentey Golden Steel Power GSP850-SM 850 Watt @ Tweaktown
• Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050W Power Supply Review @ Ninjalane
• Corsair TX750 V2: New and Improved @ AnandTech
• Athena Power AP-MFATX35 350 W Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets
• OCZ ZX 850W @ Overclockers Online
• Corsair AX850 850 W @ techPowerUp
• Corsair TX750 V2 750W & TX850 V2 850W Power Supply Review @ OCC
• Enermax NAXN 82+ 750 W Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets

OCZ Unviels New Talos SAS 6Gbps SSDs

Subject: General Tech, Storage | May 12, 2011 - 04:59 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: ssd, SAS, ocz, enterprise

OCZ Technology, a leading provider of Solid State Drives, today announced a new line of enterprise drives. The new Serial Attached SCSI SSDs differ from other enterprise offerings by using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory instead of the faster single-level cell chips. Further, OCZ has included it's proprietary VCA (Virtualized Controller Architecture) technology, which provides enterprise customers with TRIM, SMART monitoring, native command queuing (NCQ), tagged command queuing (TCQ), power fail management, and wear-leveling.

Promising up to 64,000 4K IOPS and optimized specifically for enterprise level storage applications, the MLC based Talos drives deliver "advanced application performance, all the necessary enterprise features, and substantial power savings, at a better total cost of ownership." Further, the new Talos drives represent the highest capacity SAS 6Gbps drives available today.

The new drives will be available in both 3.5" and 2.5" form factors, and range from 200 GB to 960GB. They will soon be available to small-to-medium business (SMB) as well as enterprise customers through OCZ's business-to-business channel.

Podcast #154 - Intel Z68 Chipset release, Intel SRT SSD caching technogy, OCZ Agility 3 and Solid 3 and more!

Subject: Editorial, General Tech | May 12, 2011 - 02:30 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: z68, ssd, srt, solid, smart response technology, smart response, podcast, ocz, Intel, agility

PC Perspective Podcast #154 - 5/12/2011

This week we talk about the Intel Z68 Chipset release, Intel SRT SSD caching technogy, the OCZ Agility 3 and Solid 3, Viewer Questions and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath and Allyn Malventano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:15:39

Program Schedule:

• 0:00:39 Introduction
• 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
• http://pcper.com/podcast
• http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
• 0:02:10 Intel Z68 Chipset Review: dGPU and iGPU living together, SSD Caching and Overclocking
• 0:09:40 Intel Smart Response Technology: SSD Caching on Z68 Tested
• 0:30:40 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
• 0:31:24 Gigabyte Launches World's First Z68 Motherboards With Support for mSATA Intel SLC SSDs and Smart Response Tech
• 0:36:50 Discrete Graphics Card Shipments See Slight Increase Versus Previous Quarter
• 0:40:18 OCZ Technology Announces the Agility 3 and Solid 3 SATA III Solid State Drives
• 0:43:17 Intel Atom Processors Will Not Use Intel Graphics, PowerVR GPUs Planned
• 0:46:59 Rumors point to Apple moving to ARM processors for future notebooks
• 0:53:30 Email from TK about server memory
• 0:58:24 Email from Ralph about SRT and SSD sizes
• 1:01:26 Email from Jesse about hyperthreading
• 1:06:04 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
  1. Ryan: Z68 motherboards, so far the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro is a great option
  2. Jeremy: This is great, this is scary, but I'll pick the $25 USB computer.
  3. Josh: Fast, good USB 3.0 Flash
  4. Allyn: Linksys WRT400N
• http://pcper.com/podcast   
• http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
• 1:14:55 Closing

OCZ Technology Announces the Agility 3 and Solid 3 SATA III Solid State Drives

Subject: Storage | May 10, 2011 - 11:28 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ssd, solid, sata, ocz, agility, 6gbps, 3

SAN JOSE, CA—May 10, 2011—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today unveiled the Agility 3 and Solid 3 SATA III SSD product lines. The Agility 3 and Solid 3 are designed to cater to speed-seeking enthusiasts in search of the best value for performance. Using the latest technology, these new series deliver nearly double the performance of the previous generation and offer a more cost-effective alternative to current SATA 6Gbps SSDs on the market.

“With increased availability of SATA III platforms, the demand for the latest generation SSDs has grown rapidly,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ technology Group. “We are addressing this demand with new products that offer both the best performance and value for consumers. The new Agility 3 and Solid 3 SSDs make it easier than ever for consumers take advantage of the new SATA III interface. When coupled with the speed and reliability benefits that our SSDs offer over traditional hard drives, it makes the two new series the ideal choices for mobile and desktop applications.”

Agility 3 and Solid 3 SSDs feature the leading-edge SandForce® SF-2200 SSD processor and help improve the overall computing experience compared to traditional mechanical hard drives and SATA II SSDs. The Agility 3 delivers up to 525MB/s reads, 500MB/s writes, and up to 60,000 4KB random write IOPS while the value-oriented Solid 3 features 500MB/s reads, 450MB/s writes, and 20,000 4KB random write IOPS.

Available in a new boot-drive size 60GB capacity as well as 120GB and 240GB options, Agility 3 and Solid 3 SSDs feature TRIM support to optimize performance over the drive’s lifespan. Both solutions come backed by a 3-year warranty for ultimate customer satisfaction and peace of mind.