Patriot Torqx 128GB MLC SSD
Posted 09/21/09 at 02:30:18 PM by Nathan Edwards
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Our heart swells with pride over this drive's record-setting write speeds
We’re finally out of the woods. After nearly a year in which the Intel X-25M was virtually the only solid state drive on the market not to suffer from severe latency during sustained random writes, the past few months have brought us sweet relief in the form of new SSDs with stutter-less memory controllers from such manufacturers as Samsung and Indilinx. This month, we tested the 128GB Patriot Torqx, which uses an Indilinx “Barefoot” memory controller and 64MB DRAM write cache to end the stuttering problem once and for all.
Right out of the box, Patriot impresses with the thoughtful inclusion of a 3.5-inch tray adapter for its 2.5-inch drive. It’s just a simple sheet of pot metal with screw holes and rail mounts, but it’s appreciated. The drive enclosure itself is all brushed-metal—black on top, silver on the bottom—and screws into the adapter easily.
The Patriot Torqx is a standard 2.5-inch drive, but an included adapter helps it fit into 3.5-inch desktop drive bays.
Once we got the drive into our test system, it performed like a dream, with average sustained read speeds of 205.4MB/s—virtually identical to our champion, the Intel X25-M. But the Torqx really brings home the bacon in the write speed test: Sustained write transfer speeds were a whopping 175MB/s, 16 percent faster than the previous champ, the Samsung 256GB MLC SSD (reviewed in August, retailing as the Corsair P256) and nearly three times as fast as the Intel X-25M’s 64MB/s. And although average random-write response times were slightly slower than the Samsung or Intel drives, we’re talking a few tenths of a millisecond here—still an order of magnitude faster than the Western Digital VelociRaptor, our magnetic-drive speed champion. The Torqx also proved superior in our Premiere Pro CS3 encoding test, beating the Samsung by nearly five minutes, and the Intel by one minute.
At $400 for 128GB, the Torqx is still much more expensive than a magnetic hard drive of similar capacity, but that price is pretty standard for SSDs. It offers 48GB more capacity than the $300 80GB Intel X-25M, so if you’ve got the extra Benjamin, the 128GB Torqx is a great buy. Although, if the present leapfrogging-in-awesomeness trend continues, holding out six more months for an SSD could be quite rewarding.
Patriot Torqx 128GB MLC SSD
Ben Franklin
Blistering fast reads; record-setting writes. No perceptible random-write stutter.
Benedict Arnold
Gosh, SSDs are still expensive!
Benchmarks
| Corsair P256 (Samsung 256GB MLC SSD) | Intel X25-M | Patriot Torqx 128GB | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | 256GB | 80GB | 128GB |
| Average Sustained Transfer Rate Read (MB/s) | 175.1 | 206.65 | 205.4 |
| Average Sustained Transfer Rate Write (MB/s) | 150.1 | 64.30 | 175.1 |
| Random Access Read (ms) | 0.16 | 0.12 | 0.11 |
| Random Access Write | 0.12 | 0.09 | 0.31 |
| Premiere Pro (sec) | 945 | 732 | 674 |
| PCMark Vantage Overall Score | 14,088 | 30,322 | 21,247 |
Best scores are bolded. All drives were tested on our standard test bed using a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, EVGA 680i SLI board. HDTach 3.0.1.0, h2benchw, and Premiere Pro CS3 were obtained in Windows XP; PCMark Vantage 2005 scores were obtained in Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.
top dog SSD
Submitted by elgilicious on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 4:43pm
I got the Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD because every reviewer has been raving about its speed, I was tired of waiting for my OS and games to load, and I had $350 lying around.
It comes with the latest firmware, which supports TRIM for Win7 (as per Crystal Disk Info), so there's no need to worry about TRIM. Write cycle lifespan is really no big deal; just don't defragment the SSD and move your browser cache and temporary folders to a hard drive to cut back on writing. Worst case scenario is that the thing explodes, but if you make frequent back-ups and save the receipt, you can get a replacement from Patriot because of the 10-year warranty. In an hour, you'll be up and running again. Really, all this fuss about write cycles is paranoia.
The Torqx is in line with the G.Skill Falcon, OCZ Vertex, and Intel X-25-M as far as price and performance, but it comes with a 3.5" mounting bracket for desktop cases. The warranty alone should be enough to steer you toward the Torqx given that nobody knows how long these things will really last.
I can't wait to put Win7 on this thing.
Submitted by Lars Rasmussen on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 9:15am
Does the drive firmware support TRIM running in Windows 7?
Submitted by LGA1156 on Tue, 09/22/2009 - 2:08am
This is great but the cost is still way too high, if it was around 200 I would have already ordered it
MOST SSDs have a shelf
Submitted by nekollx on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 11:37am
MOST SSDs have a shelf life of 10 years
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Life Span
Submitted by blindhorizon on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 11:31am
one thing i never see in any reviews of SSD Drives is the life span. i know they say don't defrag them because it will cut there life shorter. but how long is shorter, 5 years off for 100 years of use/life. i'm a gamer, CD/DVD and soon to be blue-ray copier/maker, Video, audio, and Photoshop person and those applications have allot of writes and rewrites from the drives with caching how will that effect the drive. currently i replace my drives about every 3-5 years sometimes sooner depending on if a drive goes bad early or technology makes an advancement that makes the upgrade worth it.
Fragmentation not necessary
Submitted by Larry Lee on Thu, 09/24/2009 - 1:09pm
An SSD drive does not require fragmentation.
Submitted by nekollx on Thu, 09/24/2009 - 1:19pm
they can and do fragment, it's just not relevent in most cases. Really a good defrag once every 3 years is enough just so the files are a bit better organized. but its not mandantor.
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Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
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