Fatal1ty teams with Fusion-io to launch 80GB ioXtreme PCI Express SSD
By Darren Murph 
posted Jun 6th 2009 11:29PM
posted Jun 6th 2009 11:29PM
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that is totally consumer-friendly....
maybe it isnt to the apple owner who forks cash for a new computer every time they upgrade..
I think the first guy was being sarcastic.
i think the second guy is a poor jealous douche.
maybe the second guy already knew the first guy was being sarcastic, and the third and fourth guy think too much.
C-C-COMBO BREAKER (?)
+4 Mana
i think the 2nd guy just has nothing to say so followed the herd and said something anti-apple, and is now hastily trying to backtrack now that his lack of both $$$ and humour has been exposed
My Dell was 4k+. Apple doesn't even produce something comparable.
But hey, gratz to you apple fanboi douches and over paying for an inferior machine. You all seem proud that you got F'd in the A.
Oh, I'm sure that's hogwash, Agent .25i.
Also, wouldn't it have been a lot more economical to build your own machine than to donate over $4000 to Dell?
For that price, I would think two 120GB OCZ Vertex drives in RAID 0 with a cheap PCI RAID card would be just as fast and 3X the capacity...
Fatal1ty is exactly that FATALITY to your pocket.
I've sworn never to buy any product with that brand, after their sound-card fiasco. It's one of the most expensive product series, but their build quality is so horrible, it just stops working after a couple of weeks.
I've returned it twice already and then given up. I've lost faith in "Creative", and I hope IO stays away from it. There's still hope for IO
Awesome, one step closer to building a completely fatalonethankyou-endorsed EXTREME GAMING RIG.
I wonder more how Fatal1ty actually helped in making the product. I know he's an extreme PC gamer, but did he do anything -other than stamp his online callsign- to make this product?
BTW: Take this money and build a RAID0 array. It will be just as close if not faster than this card.
He cashed the check...hard.
lol yeah i love how this one gamer is like put on this high horse meaning you should buy the motherboards and other stupid ass crap that has his name on it ... WHAT A JOKE!
@Aguiluz
Sure, you could build a Raid 0 array, but 15k SAS drives plus the SAS HBA will cost you several hundred each and won't match the 1.4-1.5 Gigabytes per second of speed.
One gamer who could completely shut out any of us at any FPS game in existence. I think the days of celebrity gamers is over (the days that didn't last that long no less) but he did work pretty hard to become noteworthy. If he is still making money on his name despite the major league gaming events drying up in this recession, I say kudos to him.
he told them to put that fancy red heatsink on there, and that's about it. is it just me, or does seeing his name on products make you not want to buy it?
$895? Wow, Foe the price I cab build a desktop they offer only 80 gigs. Hit me up in 2-3 years when prices are considered Wallet Rape.
I began writing you a grammar ticket for this comment and ran out of paper. Just come with me down to the station and we'll sort this all out.
the future of computing is through scalable PCI-E peripherals.
Imagine if you will teh state of computing in 10 years. PCI-E will be up to a new spec and will probably exceed 10GB/s. sounds like an appropriate platform for RAM, and yes, you guessed it, a CPU. The fact that CPUs can be soldered on die instead of modular; PCI-E will be the new die if you will, will IMMENSELY lower fab costs.
But who is to say that is still wouldn't be faster to have the socket directly on the Mobo. In fact, that's what makes sense to me.
10Gb/s pales in comparison to even HyperTransport, which as been in the 10's of GB/s since it came out, aka 8 years ago. HyperTransport 3.1 is already at 51Gb, so PCI-E still can't be considered a CPU interconnect. PCI-E doesn't have this purpose. There are different buses for a good reason. Let's also not forget that the latency on PCI-E is no where near low enough to facillitate CPU interconnects, or CPU-Ram Interconnects. Buses can not be qualified by their BW alone.
For those of us playing the home game...
Gb = Gigabit
GB = Gigabyte (aka "Gb x 8")
So...
10GB/s = 80Gb/s
that'll never happen... intel makes way too much money from changing sockets and chipsets five times a year so that next year you won't even be able to upgrade your processor and you'll be forced to buy a new mobo+cpu if you want to upgrade.
And then theres gibibytes and gigabytes...
On the one hand, it doesn't seem to make sense to set up a data path that is inherently slow or limited, but I believe the buses are limited intentionally so as to not overload the CPU. Clearly they could have placed an inherently wide data path between the video card and CPU or Memory and CPU, but at what cost to the CPU? Would the CPU be so oveloaded that it could not effectively keep functioning on user data?
IMHO, it's not like they cannot make things faster... they're trying to speed things along proportionately so that the PC still works on your tasks, not on managing the system itself.
I'll take twelve.
I hate that these things exist when I cannot likely ever afford such an awesome storage medium. I guess I just hate everyone that's happy.
Is there anything this guy won't whore his name for?
Coming Soon: Fatal1ty Gaming Cookies! Provide extra boost to get that last frag!
reasonably priced hardware?
someone say whore?
…………._@@@__
…. ___//___?____\________
…./–o—–CARE-POLICE—-@}
…..`==={@}=====+===={@}–’
The Care Police have been dispatched to another location.
I don't care.
Quick prices here, the Intel 80GB SSD is 325$ and 200$ for the 300GB Velociraptors. So if I get 4 Raptors in RAID 0 will it be faster ? Also add on that the 100$ left can almost get a 1.5TB drive for backups.
Unfortunately no matter how many hard drives you raid you can't match the access time of a SSD. However, for less money you could raid two decent consumer level SSDs and probably get similiar/same speeds.
Yeah but i would like to see how many Gs your pc could pull.
I love how SSD makers have that as a selling point.
@bot
find mw any two hard drives, consumer level or not, that you can raid together and get "sustained read bandwidth of 1,500MB/sec and write bandwidth of 1,400MB/sec".
They don't exist.
You can't even get that with two Intel SSD's.
@$900, these are becoming very interesting to think about putting in servers that have high IOPS based loads, like DB servers......
I don't need huge amounts of storage, but i do need as fast as i can get.
That's WAY TOO .. high of a price ... needs to be cut in half ...
I could go 15k scsi drives and new controller bd and still
be cheaper.
Do you know what kind of RAID system I could setup with $895? Screw that.
RAID0 array? Compete with this? You obviously have never, ever, ever, EVER touched a FusionIO card, and probably not any kind of SSD. This is no RAID card on Earth, with any mechnical drive you pick, with any amount of drives you use, that can rate at the IOPS of a FusionIO drive. It gets very near to RAMDRIVE speeds, and the only way you'd get that rate from a RAID card is to have 80 GB of storage with an 80 GB RAM cache. Please do not display your ignorance by comparing the FusionIO drive to any, any, ANY mechanical drive configuration. You *might* get close with RAID0 of SSD drives, but you'd be hard pressed to configure one with the performance and capicity of this at a lower cost (including the cost of the RAID controller).
And, yes, we have a FusionIO card in our server farm, used for virtualization. Show me a RAID system that can launch a VS in 7 seconds flat, anyone? Anyone?
dijitul - enjoy your lifetime of virginity
dijitul - Regretting that purchase i see.
@dijitul
If you're really working in any kind of a "real" data center (aka, not your basement), than you would know that if you used a NetApp Filer configured with dual 10Gb/s trunks connected to your storage network and single 10Gb/s links to each of your HBAs, you would be able to boot a RHEL 5.3 installation in 3.7 seconds or a Windows Server 2008 install under VMware's ESX server in 4.8 seconds.
These cards while an impressive achievement in terms of speed are not practical for the server world for one simple reason...
Inability to implement redundancy in hardware.
If you were to rely on these cards in a server, you would be using software RAID.
Tyson Edwards wins one internet. :)
IIRC, OCZ's PCI-E card offerings are basically 4 of their Vertex drives in RAID0. All these cards basically do is integrate the RAID controller and the flash memory onto the board.
@Tyson Edwards:
Uh, you are way off target here. Your solution would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and this product is under one thousand. Also, you talk about software redundancy, but we're comparing a product here not even meant for server enviroments in the first place. FusionIO has an entirely different product, which DOES provide redundancy. And, software redundancy or not, the FIO will beat out any other product for speed (unless, of course, you spend the tens of thousands of dollars for YOUR solution..... uhhh.. at home?). Riiiight, buddy. Good luck keeping your IT job, unless it's Tier 1 Helpdesk.
@Tyson Edwards
that netapp still won't provide the IOPS we're talking about here. Even the best SAS 15k drive is going to only eek out 180 IOPS in a complete benchmark environment w/ a raw device (nevermind a formated file system). A single Intel X25-E will give you peaks over 8k IOPS. Let that settle in your head just a bit. Try getting a Netapp that'll do that for under $900 and I'll agree with you.
Can you even boot from this thing? Yawn.
Yes, you can. We use the enterprise FIO products at our company.
ahem...
I believe I speak for everyone when I say...
WTF $895 DOLLARS?!? WAY TO KILL THE GENERAL CONSUMER!
Who else makes a PCI Express SSD card?
Are there any other ones to compare to pricewise?
@Scrip- right so why don't they just go ahead and charge 2 or 3x as much because there's no competition. Don is right, it's way too much.
I really don't see why this tech would be so expensive...
PCI express tech has been around for a while. Simply adding in some SSD shouldn't jack it up that much. And for only 80gb?
Someones gotta pay for all that marketing. Lol. Fatal1ty!!!! OOOOHHHHH it's SOOOOOO FAAAAAAAASSSSTTTTTTTTT MYYYYY KEEEEYYYYBOOOOOOARRRRRDDDD ISSSSSSSS out of control. Sorry about that. My AT keyboard did not know what to do. :(
"“Johnathan’s experience with high-end computing has given him a unique insight into the disruption our core technology brings to all levels of computing,” said Steve Wozniak, chief scientist of Fusion-io."
Whoa, wait, did I read that right? Woz works @Fusion-Io, or just some bloke who just happens to be lucky to have the same name?
I'm pretty sure he helped create the company.
no, he recently signed on to work for them.
he didn't start it.
Unless this thing can seek faster than even the cheaper, same capacity Intel SSDs, I don't see what the huge advantage is here.
And by "seek faster" I mean negative seek times. That's right, it should be be able to execute requests from the future.
in the future booting a computer will actually just be telling the computer to process every possible calculation it will do and store it to memory.
People don't seem to get it. These aren't based of your consumer grade RAID controllers. These are essentially 1 Enterprise Level Raid Controller + Multiple SLC SSDs all in one neat package. The RAID controllers necessary to make the bandwith and latency equivelant are on their own more expensive then this. These are not geared towards consumers.
yet another piece of decent equipment ruined by the Fatal1ty label...
If any of your poor bastards (and I mean poor literally) saved up enough to buy an Intel X25-E, or a HyperOS HyperDrive 5, or this FusionIO card, you'd be embarrassed by your ignorant and harsh comments on a product you've never laid fingers on, nevermind your eyes. We use FusionIO products at our enterprise, cards like these but with built-in redundancy added, and if you had ANY clue as to what you were talking about, you'd know the comment in the article above is 110% accurate:
"...ioXtreme is an 80GB PCI Express card that should make your traditional HDD seem absolutely antiquated."
I also have dual X25-E SSD's in my PC at home, and even with RAID0, it won't outrun the FusionIO card *directly* attached to your PCIe slot (in other words, sans SATA controller). I'd have to spend an additional $500 to get a RAID card that can get even close to the FIO, and it would max out RAID card, anyway. Didn't any of you read the "Battleship MTRON" article before? If you did, you'd know the RAID controller you poor bastards have at home right now is a cheap piece of crap and not designed for performance at all -- only redundancy.
I dare anybody here to post their RAID configuration that can spit out over 500MB PER SECOND of data in under 1 microsecond of access time? Anyone? Anyone?
dude. chill. you are freaking out over nothing.
@thatrotierkid: If my cold hard truth is considered 'freaking out' to you, then you're in for a big surprise about life. BTW, exactly how do your comments contribute to the topic at hand?
Hahahahahaha,, little to much coffee? Hhahahahha ur about to blow a next gasket over hardware,,,,hahahahhahahahahahaha
"cold hard truth" hahahahahahahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha!!!!!! the "cold hard truth" is ur a douche,,,, sorry man sombody had to tell you.
There are so many better things to spend money on than this. Enjoy living in your parents' basement.
US$11+ per gB? I'll stick to HDD for now.
Then you're missing the point of this product...
we realize the point, it is just totally out of reach for efficient usage of our money
>> "we realize the point, it is just totally out of reach for efficient usage of our money"
New stuff costs more... you don't have to buy it now.
Fusion-IO made a very expensive, but very fast, PCI Express SSD. In a few years, after the technology matures, and becomes cheaper... we will be better off because they spent the time to develop it.
Take CPUs for instance... They can range in price from $40 to $2500. Should Intel and AMD stop developing new processors because they cost too much at launch?
Actually it is no longer new and has been in the market for years.The SSD prices should have fallen through to a more manageable price level by now, but the manufacturers seems to be keen on keeping them on the high side.
I wonder when mere mortals like the rest of us will have access to FusionIO SSD performance.
Scratch that. How about just regular Intel SSD-level performance? Meaning, at a nice price. I'd say 1.5 - 2 years, but lots of things could change in that time, so who knows.
I would pay 250$ for a 40gB one, 255$ if it has Fatal1ty written on it.
A $225 20GB card would be better- cheap enough for people to look at it without laughing, large enough for a modern OS.
Ok, it maybe a silly question but...why can't someone make an SSD card like that with slots so that as we can afford it we can just add more SSD cards to it to make a bigger drive.
Or for that matter, why not have a multi type so we can use the cheapest options (SSD, Compact Flash, etc....)
Just a thought. :)
You already have that option, which are those flash memory that cost less than $3/GB. SSD is meant to be faster where you could install OS on it. I think flash memory is too slow to run an OS and it's only good for storage.
@sinai & chibisukee: Is that all you got? When you can't spew about the topic at hand, you spit out juvenile comments about masculinity? Impressive.
Not cheaper, or more elegant, or more practical, or less crazy, but faster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs&feature=player_embedded
Why is it not OK to release a 900 dollar storage solution? Yet it's ok to release 300 dollar motherboards for the purpose of placing 3 or 4, 400 dollar graphics cards. Really the storage system is used FAR more then the GPU in almost all cases. It's a high end product that delivers a high end expierence at a high end cost. Why are so many people acting surprised?
If SSD is meant for robustness, then what's the point of having one in a desktop? Desktop isn't meant to be portable after all.
Missed opportunity. I'd rather have a Woz edition.
I wonder how long before companies realize not a single person in the gaming community cares at all about Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel.
How fast will it load maps in WoW and how will it run Crysis?
$900 for 80 GB, and they call this consumer-friendly? Time to fire some dead weight in the product management team.
I was at E3 - and I saw the booth and demo. Pretty impressive stuff. If money is no object.... why not?
See, THIS is what I was waiting for in terms of SSD tech. I've been drooling over the ioDrive for a while, but it was the stuff of dreams. This is still too expensive, but it is a nice step forward. I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip the entire SATA II based SSD tech and wait for PCI-E based SSD's to become truely consumer level. Only then will I retire my trusty Raptor. Then again, I may use sata based SSD if by that time they are using SATA III and can somehow saturate the bus with like 4 of them. @_@
Hooray for technology!!!
@Kiv
You can still use your Raptor drive and benefit from SSD tech. Look into the Intel X25-E series of SSD. Sure, they are also a bit expensive per GB, but you can get a 16GB or 32GB drive (enough for any OS), and the speed increase is still incredible. Now, your Rapter can be used for high-speed near-line storage, the pagefile, Temporery Internet Files, and %TEMP% folder. For under $400, the 32GB X25-E is worth the upgrade and enough that you'll never, ever go back to spindle HDD for your OS. I have two of these drives, one in the desktop and one in the laptop. The next step might be this PCIe card, but with the current configuration I have, I can wait it out.
Another alternative is HyperOS's HyperDrive 5, a DDR-based ramdrive with a tone of features (including online backups). It'll beat out any SATA-based hardware you'll ever dream of owning, but I believe the FusionIO will still have the hands up for data transfer because of the PCIe bandwidth, but not in IOPS, compared to the HyeprDrive.
We have ioDrives at our company, but these are enterprise-level devices with built-in data redundancy, and they are (maybe were?) more expensive. However, in that environment, there is no substitute, and they can be made hardware redundant. The average high-end end-user wouln't blink an eye at the list price of this device, if they only understood the true performance gains.
If only all the poor bastards above, who've never even touched an SSD-based piece of hardware, knew what they were talking about. People just can't comment intelligently on something they've never used.
@dijitul
Oh I'm sure the raptor could still come in handy in that respect, I merely meant that if I am going to fork over serious money for SSD tech, it must truely be the absolute next level of performance. I am sure the current SSD's are blazing fast, but if it's a choice between buying a current state Intel X25, or waiting a while and grabbing a FusionIO product, I'll gladly wait. I dont upgrade that often, so I'll wait it out and make a BIG upgrade down the road.
My current system is a dual core Opteron 165, 2GB DDR400, one 74GB Raptor (old school 8mb cache), and a recently retired ATI X1800XT 512MB (just switched to a HD 4870 1GB couple weeks ago), running XP Pro (32bit). A slightly dated configuration by today's standards, but still runs pretty much everything I want it to run well enough (especially now with the new vid card).
So if I can keep myself from spending any money on impulse buys for my computer for a year or two, maybe my next computer will look something like this: (I will be making some guesses on what hardware might be out by then)
FusionIO boot drive, 4TB raid 5 storage array, at least 8GB ram (ddr4?), AMD Fusion (maybe it'll be out by then?), running Windows7 (x64)
Also, another reason I stay away from a current day SSD, is because I still am not convinced at their long term stats, people talk about performance declines and stuff. I feel like if I wait a mere few months I'd see a vast improvment in performance, reliability, price per GB, etc. I'm just not happy with the current state quite yet. I want it to be bulletproof!
There's always going to be bigger and better on the horizon, question is, how long can you last before buying something badass?
Definitely not for me. I don't do anything so earth shattering on any of the computers on my network at home to justify spending that much on such a small-capacity drive, regardless of how mind-blowingly fast it supposedly is (WTB independent review testing figures for curiosity sake, PST). Aside from that, gratz to those who do need it and can afford it/justify it for their setups, it should be a wonderful boon to them in the productivity department.