We have evaluated a handful of Patriot’s
SSDs recently, all of which proved to be solid (no pun intended)
offerings in their respective categories. The high-end Patriot Wildfire
SSD hung right alongside the best of the SandForce-based drives with
synchronous NAND we’ve tested and the lower-priced Pyro was also
competitive with its asynchronous NAND-equipped counterparts.
There was a fairly large price disparity between the Wildfire and Pyro, however, one which Patriot has filled with the newer Pyro SE. The SE is similar to the original Pyro, but eschews the first drive’s Micron 25nm asynchronous MLC NAND flash memory in favor of synchronous memory, which also comes by way of Micron. With synchronous flash memory paired to the SandForce controller in the drive, the Pyro SE should offer better performance with incompressible data.
We’ll see if that proves true in the benchmark pages ahead, but before we get to the numbers, here are the Patriot Pyro SE 120GB solid state drive’s features and specifications, followed by a full teardown of the drive...
There was a fairly large price disparity between the Wildfire and Pyro, however, one which Patriot has filled with the newer Pyro SE. The SE is similar to the original Pyro, but eschews the first drive’s Micron 25nm asynchronous MLC NAND flash memory in favor of synchronous memory, which also comes by way of Micron. With synchronous flash memory paired to the SandForce controller in the drive, the Pyro SE should offer better performance with incompressible data.
We’ll see if that proves true in the benchmark pages ahead, but before we get to the numbers, here are the Patriot Pyro SE 120GB solid state drive’s features and specifications, followed by a full teardown of the drive...
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| SandForce SF-2200 series SSD processor paired with qualified MLC NAND flash SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s TRIM support (O/S dependent) DuraClass technology DuraWrite extends the endurance of SSDs Intelligent Block Management and Wear Leveling Intelligent Read Disturb Management Intelligent "Recycling" for advance free space management (Garbage Collection) RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) Intelligent Data Retention optimization |
Best-in-class ECC protection for longest data retention and drive life. Power/Performance Balancing Thermal Threshold Management Native Command Queuing (NCQ) - Up to 32 commands ECC Recovery: Up to 55 bits correctable per 512-byte sector (BCH) Sequential Read & Write Transfer: 60GB model; Up to 550MB/s read | 500MB/s Write 240GB & 120GB models; Up to 550MB/s read | 520MB/s Write Max Random Write IOPS: 60GB model; Up to 80K, 240GB & 120GB models; Up to 85,000 (4K aligned) O/S Support: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / Mac OS / Linux |
As you can see, the Patriot Pyro SE
conforms to the standard 2.5” form factor common amongst today’s solid
state drives. It also features a hard aluminum shell to protect the
innards from damage. The shell is adorned with a large Patriot Pyro SE
decal on the top side, while the bottom sports another decal with model
and serial number information, along with other technical details.
Crack the Patriot Pyro SE open, and its PCB
is easily removed. Both sides are outfitted with eight, 25nm Micron MLC
NAND flash chips of the synchronous variety, for a total of 16 chips.
This type of NAND is somewhat less expensive than the Toshiba flash
memory used in the higher-end Wildfire, hence the SE’s position between
the original Pyro and Wildfire in Patriot’s current line-up.
This particular drive is a 120GB model, but there is actually 128GB of NAND on-board—the additional capacity is provisioned for wear-leveling and other drive maintenance-related features. The SandForce SF-2281 controller is positioned right between the SATA power and data and connectors and eight of the flash chips on the top side of the PCB. This is the same controller used on virtually all current SandForce-based drives targeted at desktop PC users.
This particular drive is a 120GB model, but there is actually 128GB of NAND on-board—the additional capacity is provisioned for wear-leveling and other drive maintenance-related features. The SandForce SF-2281 controller is positioned right between the SATA power and data and connectors and eight of the flash chips on the top side of the PCB. This is the same controller used on virtually all current SandForce-based drives targeted at desktop PC users.
The Patriot Pyro SE ships with a minimal
amount of accessories. There is no 2.5”-to-3.5” drive tray adapter
included and no power or data cables either. All that was bundled with
the drive was a "Go Lightning Fast" decal and a basic installation guide
/ manual.
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Motherboard - Video Card - Memory - Audio - Hard Drives - |
Hardware Used: Intel Core i7-2600K Asus P8Z6-V Pro (Z68 Chipset, AHCI Enabled) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 4GB Kingston DDR3-1600 Integrated on board WD Raptor 150GB (OS Drive) Patriot Pyro SE (120GB) Patriot Pyro (120GB) Corsair Force GT (120GB) Corsair Force 3 (120GB) Patriot Wildfire (120GB) Crucial M4 (256) |
OS - Chipset Drivers - DirectX - Video Drivers - |
Relevant Software: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64 Intel 9.2.0.1030, iRST 10.5.1027 DirectX 11 NVIDIA GeForce 275.33 Benchmarks Used: IOMeter 1.1.0 RC HD Tune v4.61 ATTO v2.47 AS SSD CrystalDiskMark v3.01 x64 PCMark 7 SiSoftware Sandra 2011 |
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As we've noted in previous SSD articles,
though IOMeter is clearly a well-respected industry standard drive
benchmark, we're not completely comfortable with it for testing SSDs.
The fact of the matter is, though our actual results with IOMeter appear
to scale properly, it is debatable whether or not certain access
patterns, as they are presented to and measured on an SSD, actually
provide a valid example of real-world performance for the average end
user. That said, we do think IOMeter is a gauge for relative available
throughput with a given storage solution. In addition there are certain
higher-end workloads you can place on a drive with IOMeter, that you
really can't with most other benchmark tools available currently.
In the following tables, we're showing two
sets of access patterns; our Workstation pattern, with an 8K transfer
size, 80% reads (20% writes) and 80% random (20% sequential) access and
IOMeter's default access pattern of 2K transfers, 67% reads (34% writes)
and 100% random access.
The Patriot Pyro SE was competitive with
the other drives when tested with our custom workstation access pattern,
but trailed all but the Crucial M4 with IOMeter's default access
pattern.
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Next we ran SiSoft SANDRA, the the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant.
Here, we used the Physical Disk test suite and provided the results
from our comparison SSDs. The benchmarks were run without formatting and
read and write performance metrics are detailed below.
The Patriot Pyro SE performed right about
where expected in the SiSoft SANDRA Physical Disk benchmark, which is to
say it finished right between the more expensive Wildfire and more
affordable original Pyro.
ATTO is another "quick and dirty" type of disk benchmark that measures
transfer speeds across a specific volume length. It measures raw
transfer rates for both reads and writes and graphs them out in an
easily interpreted chart. We chose .5kb through 8192kb transfer sizes
and a queue depth of 6 over a total max volume length of 256MB. ATTO's
workloads are sequential in nature and measure raw bandwidth, rather
than I/O response time, access latency, etc. This test was performed on
blank, formatted drives with default NTFS partitions in Windows 7 x64.
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All of the SandForce-based drives were
tightly grouped in the ATTO read and write tests, with the Crucial M4
trailing the rest of the pack at all but the smallest transfer sizes in
the write test.
EFD Software's HD Tune is described on the company's web site as such: "HD
Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to
measure the drive's performance, scan for errors, check the health
status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more." The
latest version of the benchmark added temperature statistics and
improved support for SSDs, among a few other updates and fixes.
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All of the SandForce-based drives once
again performed similarly in the various HD Tune tests, with the Patriot
Pyro SE finishing at or near the top in most.
CrystalDiskMark
is a synthetic benchmark that tests both sequential and random small
and mid-sized file transfers. It provides a quick look at best and worst
case scenarios with regard to SSD performance, best case being larger
sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.
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The CrystalDiskMark tests use
incompressible data, hence the large performance disparity between the
orignal Pyro and the newer SE model in the sequential transfer tests
here.
Next up we ran the Compression Benchmark
built-into AS SSD, an SSD specific benchmark being developed by Alex
Intelligent Software. This test is interesting because it uses a mix of
compressible and incompressible data and outputs both Read and Write
throughput of the drive. We only graphed a small fraction of the data
(1% compressible, 50% compressible, and 100% compressible), but the
trend is representative of the benchmark’s complete results.
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The Patriot WildFire offered the best write
performance across the board in the AS SSD compression benchmark. The
SandForce-based drives with synchronous NAND were all tightly grouped in
the read benchmark, however. This is another test where the original
Pyro's asynchronous NAND results in much lower scores than the newer SE.
We really like PCMark 7's Secondary Storage benchmark module for its
pseudo real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark 7
offers a trace-based measurement of system response times under various
scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system operation.
From simple application start-up performance, to data streaming from a
drive in a game engine, and video editing with Windows Movie Maker, we
feel more comfortable that these tests reasonably illustrate the
performance profile of SSDs in an end-user / consumer PC usage model,
more so than a purely synthetic transfer test.
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The Patriot Pyro SE once again finishes
right about where'd you expect it to in the PCMark 7 secondary storage
system benchmarks. It trades with the WildFire in a couple of the tests,
but overall the WildFire with it Toshiba NAND have a slight edge.
Performance Summary:
The Patriot Pyro SE performed very well throughout out battery of
tests. Generally speaking, the drive’s overall performance fell
somewhere in between the original Pyro and higher-end WildFire, which
put it right on par with other SandForce-based drives in its class. With
that said, the Pyro SE’s performance was much closer to the WildFire
than the original Pyro, especially with workloads using incompressible
data.
The Patriot Pyro SE 120GB SATA III SSD
