The Cards
XFX Revo 64
Let's have a look now at the cards themselves, starting with the XFX Revo 64.
The retail package I received was marketed towards audio professionals. There are also versions of the retail package aimed at gamers and SOHO applications. However, the underlying product remains essentially the same. The Revo 64 has the potential to work well in any of these situations, providing a simple means of protecting data for all.
Upon opening the box I was met with a warning that the package contained "dangerously awesome graphics". While I was quite impressed by the artwork on the cover of the manual, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "dangerously awesome". Perhaps XFX mistook this particular Revo 64 for a graphics card? I think we can let them off for this, however.
In the box you get the card (in this case a 3000 series three port model), the required number of SATA cables in a colour sure to prevent you from losing them, along with a CD containing the management software and also a paper manual.
Here we can see the card up-close, the XFX branded chip being the Revolution SPU, to the right of which you can see the onboard RAM TSOPs and running along the top of the card are three SATA ports. There is a silkscreen for two additional SATA ports, those being present on the 5000 series version of this card.
A special mention must be made for the SATA connectors supplied on one end of each SATA cable. They are a new variant which feature a small metal retaining clip. When the SATA socket itself supports them, they will provide a more secure connection. These sockets are present on the Revo 64 card and we've also seen sockets like this already on certain motherboards, the ASUS A8N SLI in my system being one example.
Promise FastTrack S150 SX4
Four SATA ports, the RAID 5 XOR acclerator and the DIMM are the main features of this board.
A 256MiB SDRAM DIMM sits vertically in this card when in use. Promise provide a memory testing utility to verify that RAM used in the controller is functioning properly. ECC and non-ECC RAM can be used, in sizes from 64MiB up to 256MiB.
When you place these two cards next to each other, you can really see the difference.
The SX4 is the daddy of the two cards. At 25cm long it'll give a GeForce 6800 GT/Ultra a run for its money, also making it a real pain to install if space is tight. However, Bearing in mind this card is more for workstations and budget servers, the length becomes less of an issue. The Revo 64 is much smaller, aided a great deal by the onboard RAM and hence no requirement for a memory slot.