Other World Computing today announced its OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE Solid State Drive was an integral component of a test rig that established a world record in the PCMark Vantage overall point category for a Quad Core system. The SSD Review HWBot Overclocking team, headed by Paul Alcorn, a storage specialist and overclocker who specializes in RAID/SSD performance benchmarking, eclipsed the former world record of 33271 points with a first submission high score of 34311.0 marks.
What It Takes To Set A Record
Approximately 30,452 competitors compete over a wide range of benchmarks in an ‘overclockers league’ maintained by HWBot.org. Millions of benchmarks have been run and submitted to Futuremark databases, a central verification system. Once the results are verified with Futuremark, an ‘overclocker’ is able to submit to HWBot.org.
“We chose the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE SSD for our world record attempt because its 28% over provisioning ensures much better performance over many runs,” said Paul Alcorn, captain of The SSD Review HWBot Overclocking team. “With the superior performance of OWC SSDs, and the fact that the RE model is specifically tailored for RAID environments, OWC was an obvious partner choice for our record setting test rig”.
Benchmark Testing Benefits Everyday Users
PCMark Vantage is considered the ‘gold standard’ for benchmark testing by reviewers and storage enthusiasts because it contains real world testing scenarios based on normal, common user activity. What this type of testing reveals is that OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD drives are designed to exceed everyday to beyond normal usage patterns and are especially suitable for use in demanding RAID configurations.
“I would like to thank Other World Computing for providing the Solid State Drives that enabled our team to set the world record,” said Les Tokar, founder and CEO of The SSD Review. “OWC SSDs have been proven to achieve greater performance than rated, thus making them extremely reliable for everyday use.”
OWC SSDs Offer ‘Mind-Blowing’ Speeds
In a recent review of the Areca 1880ix-12 PCIe 6G SAS RAID Controller Card by The SSD Review, eight OWC SSDs in a RAID 0 array delivered what site founder Les Tokar called ‘mind-blowing’ 3.2GB/s read and 3.6GB/s write speeds with PCMark Vantage results of over 229304.0 points. With speeds that high, a full Blu-ray movie (25GB average movie size) can be transfered in less than seven seconds.
“We’re extremely pleased our SSD was used to achieve a benchmarking world record,” said Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing. “Equally satisfying is that these independent test results continue to confirm that our SSDs deliver exceptional results for everyday users while being fully capable of handling the most demanding performance scenarios without any reliability compromise.”
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I want to say that a slow pc is so frustrating and you have helped me greatly, thanks…
@OWC Michael#6- Ha- no worries!!
The worst is that SATA 2 is 3Gb/s and SATA 3 is 6Gb/s- that always messes me up. (actually that might not even be right :-))
Thanks,
O-Dub Scott
Hi again-
So I check out the link which lead me to another link to Mac Performance Guide. They had a RAID 0 speet test article and one of the PCIe cards used was the same one I bought from you guys. The Sonnet Tempo E4P.
Here’s the article link:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mercury_Extreme-RAID.html
If you scroll down a bit you’ll see the results using the OWC SSD RE’s and this card w/ results in the 700MB/s range!!!! WOW!!!!
How the heck is this done?
My only limitation is it must be a hardware RAID 0 (external). Pro Tools, as you may know, does not work w/ Software Raid. In fact, it’s not even technically compatible w/ Hardware Raid but everyone does and I’ve been doing it forever w/ no problems but Avid/Digi refuse to say it’s compatible (probably for fear of more headaches from customers trying to do software RAID- ie the less stuff you support, the more excuses you have! ha)
Thanks again,
O-Dub Scott
Great thanks! I will check out the link.
So, is there no hardware RAID 0 enclosures that can do SATA 6Gb/s via E-sata?
Is that possible? (I actually have two E-sata controllers from you guys: the Newertech Powermax 6Gb/s and the Sonnet Tempo 3Gb/s EP4) It would seem so or else why woud companies make PCIe E-sata cards capable of SATA 6Gb/s?
That’s where I’m confused.
Anyways, as always the help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
O-Dub Scott
@O-Dub Scott You got me! I updated my prior comment to include the SATA 6Gb/s speed that I inadvertently omitted as well.
Even so, in a multi-drive RAID array internally, the post I was referring to showed transfer speeds up to 997 MB/s. Even a SATA 6Gb/s would be a bottleneck there.
Any news on when you’ll be releasing the SF2K powered SSDs? Everyone at the office is waiting for them to place a bulk order ;)
Unfortunately we can’t speak about future products, but keep an eye out to our blog as we post all of our press releases here.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is great news and so well deserved!!! I just emailed this blog post to everyone in my contacts (engineer buddys, etc)!!
I’m so pumped for you guys- and myself!! haha
So, right now I don’t have mine setup in a RAID array (my SSD RE) but plan to in the next couple months.
Couple questions if you don’t mind:
1. Would a 4 drive array be twice as fast as a two drive array (RAID 0) or does it not work like that?
2. Even though these drives are 3 Gb/s, 2 or 4 of them in a RAID 0 array can go higher, correct?
3. If the answer to number 2 is yes, which I’m pretty sure it is, what sorta enclosure would I use (I have to use hardware RAID b/c Pro Tools doesn’t recognise software RAID)? And would the enclosure be SATA 6 Gb/s
Seeing as there’s not going to be PCIe cards for thunderbolt, I’m just kinda wondering what my options are.
So happy for OWC- totally deserve it. Your drives kick some serious sumo butt and 6 months later they’re still at it- still kickin’ that same sumo butt!
Thanks,
O-Dub Scott
@O-Dub Scott I think you’ll find this blog post and the accompanying links will answer most of your questions.
Make your Mercury Extreme SSD Even Faster!
As for an external RAID setup, regardless of the raw speed of the RAID setup, you are limited to the transfer speed of the interface connection:
eSATA – 6.0 Gbit/s (or 600MB/sec)
eSATA – 3.0 Gbit/s (or 300MB/sec)
eSATA – 1.5 Gbit/s (or 150MB/sec)
FireWire 800 – 800Mbps (or 100MB/sec)
FireWire 400 – 400Mbps (or 50MB/sec)
USB 2.0 – 480Mbps (or 60MB/sec)
USB 1.1 – 12Mbps (or 1.5MB/sec)
Which is why Thunderbolt is going to be very exciting once compatible RAID enclosures are developed as that interface should be able to handle up to 10.0Gb/s (or 1000 MB/sec).