Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD3. Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD (Ultra High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. CrystalDiskMark6. Atto Disk Benchmark7. AS SSD8. IOMeter9. Real World Testing10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

If you go shopping this month for a Solid State Drive, then you will be presented with a bewildering array of choices. If we are being honest, most people tend to buy an SSD based around the price and the Pyro may appeal, as it is a cheaper version of the excellent Patriot Wildfire, which we reviewed a few weeks ago.

The Patriot Pyro 120GB retails for around £60-£70 less than the Wildfire (£168.84 inc vat from Amazon), but it still uses the class leading Sandforce SF-2281 controller. It is a SATA 6Gbps drive priced for the widest possible audience.

Specifications overview:

• SandForce SF-2200 series SSD processor paired with qualified MLC NAND flash for best performance, value and reliability.
• 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: 240GB & 120GB models; 550MB/s read | 515MB/s Write 60GB model; 520MB/s read | 490MB/s Write.
• Max Random Write IOPS: Up to 85,000 (4K aligned)/240GB & 120GB models; up to 80,000 (4K aligned)/60GB model.
• O/S Support: Windows® XP / Vista / 7 / Mac® OS / Linux.

The Patriot Pyro 120GB drive arrives in a very stylish orange and black box with the product highlighted through the package.

The Pyro 120GB isn't supplied with a bundle, you just get the unit inside the box.

The drive is controlled by the excellent SandForce SF-2281 which is matched up with sixteen 8GB Micron NAND memory modules. The drive has full TRIM support as well as DuraWrite compression support. With Intelligent wear levelling and RAISE support, there is nothing lacking.

The drive formats to 111GB in Windows 7.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main Test System:

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate
Monitor: Dell U2410

OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB Test System:
CPU: Intel Core i7 990x @ 4.8ghz
Cooler: Corsair H100 Performance Liquid Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition
Memory: 12GB Kingston DDR3 @ 1600mhz 9-9-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Nvidia GTX580
Chassis: Lian Li X2000F
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise
Monitor: Dell U2410

Other Drives for comparisons:
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB
ADATA S511 240GB
Intel 510 120GB
Corsair F100 100GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB
MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark
HD Tach
CrystalMark
HD Tach 3.0.4.0.
AS-SSD Benchmark
IOMeter
SiSoft Sandra
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

As expected, when dealing with incompressible data, overall performance suffers.

4k QD32 performance suffers, due to the incompressible data being used in this test.

When we enable the alternative ‘compressible’ setting called 0×00 fill, performance results increase dramatically.

Sequential read and write performance is actually very good, even when compared against class leading drives and the flagship Patriot Wildfire 120GB model.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Results from the Sandforce 2281 drives are all very close, right at the top of the chart.

AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

This drive suffers in this test because AS SSD uses incompressible data. Sequential results are therefore lower than they would be in the real world, under normal conditions. The more expensive Patriot Wildfire handles incompressible data much better, as can be seen in the images above.

IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We use a custom 4k random write test to measure performance.

IOMeter 4k write performance is fairly good, scoring 32,778 at our given settings.

It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the real meat of the testing has to be under absolute real world conditions. This proves difficult as to record results we have to narrow down fluctuation. Therefore while we would say these are the most useful results to get from this review, there is always going to be a slight margin for error – its not absolutely scientific.

Firstly we installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition onto each of the drives and performed a clean update from Microsoft with all patches and security fixes. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Firefox and Adobe Design, then we install AVG free antivirus. We used a digital watch for this startup and repeated the test five times for each drive – once we had these five results we averaged the results and took that for the final figure.

The results are impressive, falling in beside the Agility 3 240GB at 23 seconds.

The Pyro drive manages to match the Wildfire with this game load test, scoring 18 seconds.

Patriot have two excellent performance oriented 120GB solid state drives on the market now: The more expensive Wildfire delivers ultimate incompressible data throughput, but with a wallet sapping asking price of £225 inc vat. The Pyro, which we reviewed today is sold for around £60 less, at £170 inc vat.

The Pyro would make a lot of sense for many people, because in the real world you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. With incompressible data tests the Wildfire storms ahead, but in other situations they are very closely matched and both capable of speeds well in excess of 500 MB/s.

The Pyro is a no nonsense solid state drive that ticks all the right boxes and is accessible for a wide audience of enthusiast user. The Sandforce SF2281 controller continues the long run of class leading performance, and the Pyro is another top quality drive reinforcing the line up.

Pros:

• Great all round performance, often in excess of 500 MB/s.
• nice appearance.

Cons:

• incompressible data performance is weak.
• no 2.5 inch drive bay supplied.

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