Hardware Patriot Wildfire 120GB review

Patriot's Wildfire uses a SandForce 2281 controller and speedy 32nm NAND; is it the fastest SSD yet?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2011/07/27/patriot-wildfire-120gb-review/1

 

Mushkin Chronos deluxe 120GB

Maximum Read: 560MB/sec, Maximum Write: 515MB/sec, Random Write 4KB (Aligned): 90,000 IOPS, Controller: SandForce SF-2281

 

We've spoken to Mushkin about reviewing its drives, but it doesn't sell in the UK to my knowledge. Regardless, it'll likely be similar to the Wildfire; same controller, with slightly fancier NAND and possibly a tweaked firmware. I really don't think you'll be able to notice those extra IOPs in a home user environment.

 

Aria have them in stock for 200 squid

 

still not quite on the mark for $/gb only 1-2 years left.

 

I have to admit that I totally missed the launch of 6GB memory modules and the firmware upgrade of s1155 to triple channel memory....

 

Clearly moved in on the sly. We'll get one in.

 

From the Test Setup, Common Components section:

Intel RST AHCI driver (msahci.sys)

Intel's RST driver is iastor, and Microsoft's AHCI driver is msahci, both usable on the P67, so which one? A typo I presume.

 

The drive quotes IOPs on an 4K file over an 8GB LBA.

Who in the world uses 8GB of data on a drive intended by most for boot? An OS for a start is pushing 14GB.

That drive should have figures for an LBA covering 80% capacity which is a more realistic "real world" figure and as such not as missleading to those who may not be aware of this.

An 80GB LBA would come in around the 50K IOPs area. The Mushkin uses Asynchronous NAND rather than the better higher quality Synchronous NAND as well making the drive on paper no different apart from the odd claimed MAX reads/writes than say the Agility 3 or the Force 3 rather than the superior Vertex 3, Kingston HyperX SSD or Force GT

 

Inconsistencies, probably typos:

Page 3, graph 1:
Title: Sequential read speeds
Legend: Average write
Which is it?

Same thing on graph 6.

 

Two hundred sea creatures? I might have to book some time off work and sea if my mate by the sea is free!

 

I bought my 120GB Crucial C300 SSD a whole 1.5 years ago for $200. Manufacturers are simply gouging on prices. As much as I'm not a fan of Apple- but their new Macbook Air's manage to drop in 256GB Samsung SSD's and the entire system retails for around $1400-1600.

Maybe we need another large-scale lawsuit to shuffle prices a bit.

 

oh what a witty one we have here..

 

You say the Patriot is aiming at the top, and mention the Vertex 3 Max IOPS as being that top.
Why then compare it to the 240gb vertex 3 vanilla?
Shouldn't you compare the wildfire to the vertex 3 Max IOPS 120gb? Since from what I've read elsewhere the main difference between the 2 is the firmware. Same NAND, same controller.. Also capacity effects speed so a 120 vs 120 compare is in order!

Reason I say all this, is at least in Australia, the max IOPS is $5-$10 more than the wildfire, and reflects the performance difference. But you do not cover this. Plus I still don't trust 25nm NAND lifecycle

 

Intel iastor RST drivers, and Microsoft AHCI driver msahci, available both for P67, then which one? A typo I believe.

 

These drive prices are simply too far out of reach, they are too expensive and appear to increase in cost with every new technology release - sure they are faster, but I'd be happy buying last gen products at a much better price, after all they are still 2x faster than a hard disk for an OS drive (apparently).

.... anything over £0.75 per GB of formatted available space is never going to take the mainstream market, the first company to blink and make this offering will no doubt become the market leader in a very short space of time.

Also - I think the review hit the nail on the head, all of these drives use the same controllers and it's incredibly challenging to justify buying anything but the cheapest model available for the same sized unit with the same controller.

 

you can get an c300 256gb for around £300, seems good all rounded and has been out for an bit so bugs have been worked out

really unless your doing server or some very time sensitive things, any ssd will do as long as its reliable and cheap (do not buy into the this ssds is 10-100mb faster then last ssd, the speed for the most part due to random read and write if its better then 20mb/s it should be good)

most ssds your talking about 1-2 second boot between them (why most reviewers no longer bothering showing boot times any more ) only time I think they should be included if the ssd sucks like jmmicron first, second and 3rd go at it sucked (the 4th or current ones seem ok now as they are faster then an floppy drive at random writes)