Benchmarks: Real-World Applications
The RevoDrive Hybrid had a disappointing showing in our Windows 7 boot test. The first run was particularly slow, taking 32.4 seconds – that's worse than the common 7200RPM mechanical hard drive. The second run provided a 47% improvement in load time taking 16.3 seconds, which is well ahead of standard HDDs but still slower than high performance SSDs.
However, it is certainly worth mentioning that the performance delivered by Seagate's Momentus XT and Intel's SRT should only be compared to the first run of the RevoDrive Hybrid, as they were recorded from the first run. Therefore, in reality this does make the RevoDrive Hybrid considerably slower. After all, how many times are you going to reboot Windows in a row?
When measuring multi-tasking performance the RevoDrive Hybrid performed quite well on its first run, taking just 11.3 seconds. It enjoyed an unusually healthy lead over Hitachi's 3.5" mechanical hard drive and it was even faster than the Momentus XT. SRT was slightly faster, taking just 10.5 seconds. By the third run, the RevoDrive whittled its time down to 5.4 seconds.
Interestingly, the RevoDrive Hybrid was quite slow on its first run when loading Adobe Photoshop CS4 on its own, taking 5.4 seconds. That said, for a 1TB drive, OCZ's PCIe hybrid device was twice as fast as an equal capacity 3.5" HDD.
Both the Momentus XT and SRT were faster on their first runs – the former was 46% quicker, in fact. By the third run, the application was fully cached and it only took 1.2 seconds to open but this would also be the case with a mechanical hard drive after the third run, as the program is still cached anyway.
When loading the "All In" StarCraft II level, the RevoDrive Hybrid took 38.7 seconds on its first run, ranking it just ahead of the Momentus XT and just behind the Deskstar with SRT. This also means that on its first run, the RevoDrive Hybrid is no faster than a typical hard drive.
By its third run, the OCZ's offering cut the time to an impressive 13.4 seconds, but as we've said already, even a mechanical hard drive without and SSD cache would load considerably faster on the third attempt.