G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 12, 2014 9:02 AM ESTFinal Words
The Phoenix Blade is a beast in performance. It's in the top two of all the client-level SSDs that we have ever tested and trades blows with Samsung's XP941 PCIe SSD (although I must say here that most of the client drives we have tested are SATA based, so the Phoenix Blade with its PCIe 2.0 x8 interface and four SF-2282 controllers in RAID 0 is obviously at an advantage). However, that doesn't necessarily dictate the drive's performance, especially outside synthetic benchmarks, because as we learned in the RevoDrive 350 review, a PCIe SSD isn't always faster than a good SATA 6Gbps SSD.
Comparing the RevoDrive 350 to the Phoenix Blade is actually very interesting: while the two share the same core (4x SF-2282), the Phoenix Blade is considerably faster in all our benchmarks. It's hard to point at the SBC controller given how little we know and the lack of information available, but most likely the RAID controller and its firmware are to thank for the performance as the SF-2282 controller and firmware are essentially the same for all vendors. I have to say I'm impressed with what G.Skill has been able to put out with its first ever PCIe SSD because OCZ has a long history of building PCIe designs.
| Price Comparison (12/11/2014) | |
| 480/512GB | |
| G.Skill Phoenix Blade | $700 |
| OCZ RevoDrive 350 | $795 |
| Samsung XP941 | $510 |
Better yet, the price is nearly $100 lower than what the RevoDrive 350 sells for, but on the other hand that's still almost $200 more than the 512GB XP941. As a result the XP941 will remain as my recommentation for users that have compatible setups (PCIe M.2 and boot support for the XP941) because I'd say it's slightly better performance wise for typical client workloads and at $200 less there is just no reason to choose the Phoenix Blade over the XP941, except for compatibility.
This is ultimately the niche for the Phoenix Blade. Since XP941 boot support is mostly limited to motherboards with the Z97 chipset, there is a market for users with older motherboards where the XP941 is simply not an option due to the lack of boot support. The Phoenix Blade features legacy drivers that load before the BIOS, so it can be selected as the boot device in practically any motherboard. As such it's currently the best option for people who don't have an Z97 system but want fast 'all-in-one' PCIe SSD storage. (Another option would be a PCIe RAID card with SATA 6Gbps SSDs in RAID 0, but that requires more set up and management.) It comes at a cost, but the users who need/want a drive with such high performance and fall into the non-Z97 niche shouldn't find the price overwhelming.
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Duncan Macdonald - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
How does this compare to 4 240GB Sandforce SSDs in software RAID 0 using the Intel chipset SATA interfaces?Kristian Vättö - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Intel chipset RAID tends not to scale that well with more than two drives. I have to admit that I haven't tested four drives (or any RAID 0 in a while) to fully determine the performance gains, but it's safe to say that the Phoenix Blade is better than any Intel RAID solution since it's more optimized (specific hardware and custom firmware).nathanddrews - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Sounds like you just set yourself up for a Capsule Review.Havor - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link
I dont get the high praise of this drive, sure it has value for people that need high sequential speed, or people that use it to host a database on a budget that have tons of request, and can utilize high QD, all other are better off with a SATA SSD that preforms much better with a QD of 2 or less.As desktop users almost never go over QD2 in real word use, so they would be much better of with a 8x0 EVO or so, both performance wise as price wise.
I am actually wane of the few that could use the drive, if i had space for it (running quad SLI), as i use a RAMdrive, and copy programs and games that are stored on the SSD in a RAR file, true a script from a R0 set of SSDs to the RAMdisk, so high sequential speed is king for me.
But i count my self in the 0.1% of nerds, that dose things like that because i like doing stuff like that, any other sane person would just use a SSD to run its programs of.
Integr8d - Sunday, December 14, 2014 - link
The typical self-centered response: "This product doesn't apply to me. So I don't understand why anyone else likes it or why it should be reviewed," followed by, "Not that my system specs have ANYTHING to do with this, but here they are... 16 video cards, raid-0 with 16 ssd's, 64TB ram, blah blah blah..." They literally just look for an excuse to brag...It's like someone typing a response to a review of Crest toothpaste. "I don't really know anything about that toothpaste. But I saw some, the other day, when I went to the store in my 2014 Dodge Charger quad-Hemi supercharged with Borla exhaust, 20" BBS with racing slicks, HID headlights, custom sound system, swimming pool in the trunk and with wings on the side so I can fly around.
It's comical.
dennphill - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link
Thanks, Integ8d, you put a smile on my face this morning! My feelings exactly.pandemonium - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link
Hah. Nicely done, Integr8d.alacard - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
The DMI interface between the chipset and the processor maxes out at about 1800~1850MB/s and this bandwidth has to be split between all the devices connected to the PCH which also incorporates an 8x pci 2.0 link. Simply put, there's not enough bandwidth to go around with more than two drives attached to the chipset in raid, not to mention that the scaling beyond 2 drives is fairly bad in general through the PCH even when nothing else is going on. And to top it all off 4k performance is usually slightly slower in Raid than a on a single SSD (ie it doesn't scale at all).I know Tomshardware had an article or two on this subject if you want to google it.
personne - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
It takes three SSDs to saturate DMI. And 4k writes are nearly double on long queue depths. So you get more capacity, higher cost, and much of the performance benefit for many operations. Certainly tons more than a single SSD at a linear cost. If you research your statements.alacard - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
To your first point about saturating DMI, we're in agreement. Reread what i said.To your second point about 4k, you are correct but i've personally had three separate sets of RAID 0 on my performance machine (2 vertex 3s, 2 vertex 4s, 2 vectors), and i can tell you that those higher 4k results were not impactful in any way when compared to a single SSD. (Programs didn't load faster for instance.)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-bench...
That leaves me curious as to what you're doing that allows you to get the benefits of high queue depth RAID0? What's your setup, what programs do you run? I ask because for me it turned out not to be worth the bother, and this is coming from someone who badly wanted it to be. In the end the higher low queue depth 4k of 1 SSD was a better option for me so i switched back.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Some-though...