Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD Sneak Peek!

Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD Sneak Peek!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - by Dave Altavilla
If you've been watching our previous coverage of Fusion-io's almost too good be true PCI Express SSD products, you'll know that while the company makes no bones about the fact that their enterprise class cards are ridiculously expensive, they are also planning on delivering an "enthusiast" class card that will align better price-wise with the average end user just looking for killer storage performance.  It appears the planning process is over today and though it was delayed a month or two, Fusion-io is now executing on that plan. 

Fusion-io's ioXtreme and ioXtreme Pro cards just showed up to the Boston HH Test Labs and as we like to say around here, they're looking pretty <HOT>.

Left:  Fusion-io's ioXtreme  - Right:  Fusion-io's ioXtreme Pro


Left:  ioXtreme Pro  - Right:  ioXtreme - Click for high res.
We've received two cards for testing here; one is the ioXtreme Pro, that you can install multiple cards into a system for RAID configurations and the other is the ioXtreme for single-card installations.  Save for the heat sink color coding and the "X" logo on the standard card's backplate, it's almost impossible to tell the two cards apart, at least mechanically.


Fusion-io ioAdministrator Software
Fusion-io's ioAdministrator software allows for basic management and monitoring of the drive volume.  You can also perform a low-level format of the drive and choose settings from maximum write performance with less total capacity, to max capacity with lower performance. (Update: 4:50PM this function is not available on the ioXtreme but only on the enterprise-class ioDrive product)

This software functions very much like Fusion-io's standard ioManager software we showed you here.  As a quick-take on performance, we've formatted an 80GB ioXtreme Pro with maximum capacity settings and ran it through an ATTO Disk Benchmark run for grins and giggles.


ioXtreme Pro ATTO Performance
Click for high res.


Simple, Half-Height PCI-Express Elegance - More details and a full review soon!
It's true, your eyes do not deceive you.  You're looking at a product that offers 300MB/sec average write throughput and 750 - 800MB/sec of average read throughput.  We're going to strap on a drool bib and get back to testing these bad boys a bit more. RAID 0 anyone?  Stay tuned!
Via: HotHardware | News Archive | Tags: SSD, Storage, Fusion-io, PCI Express, ioXtreme, ioDrives
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Comments

By acarzt on Oct 27, 2009

that is some impressive read speeds! That's twice as fast as my 2 OCZ Vertex drives in a RAID 0!

By 3vi1 on Oct 27, 2009

WOW!

Two questions: Pricing, and does it require any kind of OS-specific drivers?

I wouldn't expect it to need special drivers, since you will be booting from it, but am pretty sure there would be Win-specific utilities needed to use it in a RAID operation implementation - unless they recommend a fully softRAID config, which should work well given it's speed..

By ClemSnide on Oct 27, 2009

Drool.

Given that the previous release retailed for $3300 (80 GB), I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the new release will be less than that. In fact, I'd even guess less than $1700, since that's the price for OCZ's smallest (250 GB) PCIe SSD.

And throwing caution to the wind: I'm saying $850. That's a rough average price for Intel's 64 GB X-25E SSD, which is also a SLC.

Quick poll: Haw many here would buy the non-RAIDable, 80 GB model for $850? I'd have to say no, since it would still be too much money, but I'd be looking for ways to afford it. Hmm, I only need one kidney...

By 3vi1 on Oct 27, 2009

>> Quick poll: Haw many here would buy the non-RAIDable, 80 GB model for $850?

Iiiiii dunno... I'd have to wait another month to change the oil in my Bugatti Veyron.

By bob_on_the_cob on Oct 28, 2009

Can't wait to see drives like this come down to my level. I think I drooled a little.

By realneil on Oct 28, 2009

I bruised my chin when it hit my new Extreme Gear Keyboard.

I sometime wonder if I'll still be around to see these kinds of drive become affordable to the most of us out here in reality-land.

By martin_nj on Oct 28, 2009

so if SSDs that read at 200+ make windows lighting fast, will these new 800+ drives make a visible difference? nope.

will they hurt your wallet? yep.

so then aspiring reader, who needs these drives? people running database servers.

and those people don't care about price because the data on their servers is worth 10x the hardware. at least it should be =]

will we see these in our rigs in the next 5 years? nope.

By Ellem on Nov 2, 2009

"so then aspiring reader, who needs these drives? people running database servers."

actually, I found mine quite useful for photoshop and heavy grphx work. very very very useful when creating game mods and rendering.

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