First Looks: Patriot Pyro and Wildfire 120GB SSDs – Blazing Speeds

First Looks: Patriot Pyro and Wildfire 120GB SSDs – Blazing Speeds

Going Faster

Even though the price-per-gigabyte of SSDs (solid state drives) remains costly, we must face the fact that they are yearned for, not because of their storage capacity, but because of their speedy performance. Additionally, since they are not mechanical in nature like traditional hard disk drives, they consume less energy, are less vulnerable to shock and vibration, thus, more durable.

A couple of months ago, we wrote about the 300GB Intel SSD 320 Series SSD and we expressed our positive impressions on it, giving merit to its performance better than its predecessor. However, if there was an important missing factor on that Intel SSD, it would be the use of a SATA 6Gbps interface. SSD maker Patriot ensured that it will not be left behind the SSD race. Patriot not only equipped their latest SSD models, the Pyro and the Wildfire, with SATA 6Gbps; it has also thrown in the mix a SandForce chip to make them among the fastest offerings in the market today.

From Outside and Within

Like other SSDs, the outline of the Pyro and the Wildfire is straightforward. Compliant with the 2.5-inch internal drive form factor, both SSDs are light and can fit into a notebook. Patriot promotes the drives as energy-efficient, shock-proof, and silent, which are inherent attributes of SSDs, taking into account the absence of mechanical components in their schemas.

On the outside, both SSDs carry a dark gray, metallic enclosure. As expected, each drive has a printed circuit board (PCB) within on which a SATA 6Gbps interface and SandForce SF-2281VB1-SDC SSD processor are embedded. To meet the 120GB capacity, each SSD incorporates a set of sixteen MLC NAND flash chips. The two drives differ in the type of flash memory being used: the Pyro employs the Micron 29F64G08CBAAA, whereas the Wildfire has the Toshiba TH58TAG6D2FBA49.

Here is a list of features of Patriot's Pyro and Wildfire SSDs:

- TRIM Support
- DuraClass Technology
- DuraWrite
- Intelligent Block Management
- Wear Leveling
- Intelligent Read Disturb Management
- Intelligent Recycling
- RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements
- Intelligent Data Retention Optimization
- ECC Protection
- Power/Performance Balancing
- Thermal Threshold Management
- Native Command Queuing
- ECC Recovery
- Max Random Write IOPS: Up to 85,000
- Supported OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / Mac OS / Linux

Blistering Performance

Given the aforementioned specs, we were not surprised to see Patriot’s Pyro and Wildfire beat the SSDs that we had tested before. On ATTO Disk Benchmark, the Patriot SSDs recorded read speeds much higher than what the 300GB Intel SSD 320 Series did. More impressive are the write speeds that the Pyro and the Wildfire registered, thrice faster than that of the other SSDs that we included in the table.

The Pyro and the Wildfire remained consistent in making an outstanding impression when we grilled them using Futuremark’s battery of tests for storage drives. The high write speeds that the two SSDs had recorded on ATTO Disk Benchmark reflected on the high scores that they listed on some specific categories of PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7. Certainly, tasks like importing of photos and editing of videos require a drive that has fast write speeds and the Pyro and the Wildfire seemingly will not disappoint in these applications.

For reference, the SSDs were tested on a setup composed of an Intel Core i5-2500K at 3.3GHz clock, the SATA 6Gbps-enabled ASUS P8P67 Deluxe motherboard, 2x 4GB Kingston DDR3-1600 memory modules, and an AcBel 1000 Watts PSU, with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit as operating system.

Final Thoughts

Patriot has aptly christened its new SSD offerings, the Pyro and the Wildfire, as each product manifests scorching read and write speeds that surpass previous-generation SSDs. Sensibly, what makes both SSDs deliver such kind of performance is Patriot’s use of the current SATA 6Gbps interface and SandForce SF-2281VB1-SDC SSD processor.

However, in spite of similarities in specifications, it is undeniable that the Wildfire is faster than the Pyro, just as what our benchmark results reveal. This gives us an idea that the Wildfire, which comes with a 3.5-inch hard drive bracket, is intended for powerful desktop machines, whereas the Pyro is suitable for SATA 6Gbps-enabled gaming notebooks. As better performance would usually demand high pricing, Patriot offers the Wildfire at the cost of PhP 16,420.85 to be exact. The Pyro, on the other hand, is capped with the price tag of PhP 12,250, over PhP 4,000 cheaper than the Wildfire.

More information about the features and specs of Patriot's Pyro and Wildfire SSDs are available at www.patriotmemory.com.