Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out Fusion-io ioDrive 160GB Email This Print This View My Personal Library Heavy Gear October 2009 • Vol.9 Issue 10 Page(s) 40 in print issue Add To My Personal Library Fusion-io ioDrive 160GB ioDrive 160GB $7,200 Fusion-io www.fusion-io.com CPU Rating: 4 SSDs as we know them are technically flawed. In fact, it’s arguable that the SATA interface itself is flawed. You see, the SATA interface is an adaptation of the ATA/IDE. Also, SATA chipset controllers bridge from the legacy but newer SATA interface to PCI-E, where they connect to these “native” serial links on the motherboard chipset. What does this “bridging” from SATA to PCI-E do for you besides adapt an older, backward-compatible interface to a newer interface? It adds latency and slows things down. Solid-state storage of the future, in all likelihood, will eventually do away with this bridging and direct attach NAND flash memory volumes to PCI-E. The folks at Fusion-io managed to bring a bit of the future to the here and now with the ioDrive. We tested an 80GB variant back in March (see page 40 in the March 2009 issue) and took time to revisit Fusion-io’s 160GB version to see how it stacks up against a quartet of Intel X25-M SSDs in RAID 0—a ridiculously fast competitor. The 160GB SLC ioDrive we tested is rated for 750MBps read/670MBps write bandwidth. Those four 80GB Intel X25-M SSDs theoretically are capable of 1GBps read/280MBps write bandwidth. The numbers speak for themselves, but it’s safe to say that removing the latency of bridging SATA to PCI-E has its advantages. Currently, the Fusion-io drive is a bit out of reach for the average end user, but enterprise applications that demand this sort of throughput will more easily justify its cost. Fusion-io is also bringing its end user-targeted ioXtreme SSD to market sometime in July with a much more palatable price. We’ll be salivating until then. by Dave Altavilla PCMark Vantage ioDrive Intel X25-M (4x RAID 0) Defender (MBps) 406.62 259.71 Gaming (MBps) 483.51 198.44 Photo Gallery (MBps) 482.82 302.6 Vista Startup (MBps) 657.59 313.26 Movie Maker (MBps) 399.85 376.21 Media Center (MBps) 496.54 156.8 Application Loading (MBps) 460.3 267.05 Windows Media Player (MBps) 264.33 215.07 HD Tach Average Read (MBps) 581 702 Average Write (MBps) 506s 306 Burst Speed 702 1996 IOMeter Workstation – 8 IO/target (IOps) 71544 35171 Database - 64 IO/target (IOps) 69744 43753 Test system specs: Intel Core i7-975 Extreme 3.33GHz, Gigabyte EX58-Extreme, 6GB DDR3-1066, Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP2, ioDrive driver: 1.2.5.0  User Reviews Be the first to write a review of this product Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. Enter A Subject (key words or a phrase): ALL Words (‘digital’ AND ‘photography’) ANY Words (‘digital’ OR ‘photography’) Exact Match ('digital photography'- all words MUST appear together) Home      Copyright & Legal Information      Privacy Policy      Site Map      Contact Us Copyright © 2010 Sandhills Publishing Company U.S.A. All rights reserved.