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Patriot Torqx 128GB MLC SSD

Nathan Edwards — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:30:18 -0500

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 Decks Out SSD with Double the Cache

Paul Lilly — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:25:38 -0500

Several SSD owners have reported intermittent stuttering, a problem that usually creeps up on drives built around a JMicron controller. But according to Patriot, insufficient cache can also be the culprit, and the company's new Torqx M28 series seeks to solve the problem by doubling the amount of DRAM cache from 64MB to 128MB.

"The Torqx series SSDs takes the technology of SSD to the next level," says Meng J. Choo, Patriot's Flash Product Manager. "Competitor non-cache drives suffered from what consumers described as 'stuttering effect' which inhibited the drive performance. Torqx series addresses this issue with a DRAM cache that acts as a buffer for data transfer bottlenecks and increases the random and sequential read and write transfer speeds."

So far available in both 128GB and 256GB capacities, the Torqx M28 come rated at up to 220MB/s sequential read and up to 200MB/s sequential write speeds - respectable, but not earth moving. Somewhat more impressive, the drives come backed by a 10 year warranty, or at least double that of most hard drives.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Patriot

Patriot's AMD Black Edition Ready DDR3 G Series Looks Hot

Paul Lilly — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:41:18 -0500

Patriot Memory has buddied up with AMD to release its first co-branded Gamer Series memory kit, the AMD Black Edition Ready DDR3 G Series.

"Platforms featuring the latest socket AM3 for AMD processors, including the AMD Phenom II processor family, takes full advantage of the new Patriot Gamer Series memory," said Leslie Sobon, VP of Product Marketing, AMD. "Combined with AMD OverDrive software version 3.0.2, users can experience a state-of-the-art, real time over-clocking utility that allows unprecedented control over their AMD processor / chipset and memory to help push the performance threshold to it peak limits."

Marketing jargon aside, the kits come in both DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1333 frequencies in Low Latency (9-9-9-24) and Enhanced Latency (7-7-7-20) form. Voltage requirements vary by kit, ranging from 1.5V (DDR3-1333 Low Latency) to 1.9V (DDR3-1600 Enhanced Low Latency).

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Patriot

Patriot Adds 4GB and 8GB DDR2 Memory Kits to Mobile SODIMM Lineup

Paul Lilly — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:21:18 -0500

It makes us sick to our stomach to think we used to pay $300 and up for premium 2GB memory kits just a few short years ago, when now you can get twice the capacity for roughly the cost of a Happy Meal, sans toy. If you're new to computing, trust us when we say that most of today's memory kits are a steal at their current price points.

Whether the same will be said about Patriot's newest SODIMM memory kits remains to be seen, but hey, we're stoked to see the higher capacity parts being offered in mobile form. The memory maker just announced two new additions to its Signature series, 4GB and 8GB DDR2-800 dual-channel SODIMMs.

"The performance gap between mobile and desktop computing has reduced significantly over the recent introduction of more powerful mobile platforms," commented Les Henry, Director of Engineering at Patriot. "By adding Patriot's DDR2 4GB module or 8GB in dual-channel mode, mobile systems can eliminate that gap and perform like a true desktop replacement."

No official word yet on pricing or availability (Newegg lists the not-yet-stocked 8GB kit for $299), but 8GB? Suck it, netbooks.

Image Credit: Patriot via TigerDirect

Patriot SSD Photocopies Page out of VelociRaptor Handbook

Paul Lilly — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:00:10 -0500

At a glance, it'd be easy to mistake Patriot's newest Warp SSD for a Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drive. That's because like the VelociRaptor, Patriot plans to include a bracket with the Warp drive that converts the 2.5-inch drive into a 3.5-inch form factor.

Keep in mind that Western Digital's IcePAK was designed to help keep its 10K RPM hard drive cool. Patriot's bracket, which Fudzilla says is made out of aircraft-grade aluminum, will undoubtedly lend additional cooling prowess to the Warp SSD, but SSDs don't typically get hot in the first place.

As for the drive itself, the third-gen SSD checks in at 256GB and boasts increasingly common read and write speeds of 240MB/s and 160MB/s, respectively.

No word yet on availability or price, however according to Fudzilla, Patriot plans to give the bracket away for free with the Warp SSD.

Image Credit: Fudzilla

Patriot Xporter XT 4GB

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:38:44 -0600

The Patriot Xporter XT offers the same capacity at less than half the price of Kingston’s drive (reviewed next). Unfortunately, that’s the only stand-out feature we could find.

Like Corsair’s Flash Voyager, the Xporter XT is dreadfully slow at writing small files, but unlike the Voyager, it doesn’t make up for that weakness with especially speedy large- and medium-file transfers. The Xporter XT also can’t compare to Kingston’s offering, which too is just fair at large- and medium-size files, but crazy-fast with small files.

Don’t get us wrong, the Xporter XT is no slouch. It’s close in write performance to the OCZ Rally and the SanDisk Cruzer that we rated highly in November. But that was before the 8GB Corsair and 4GB Kingston keys arrived. And given the Xporter XT’s lack of U3 support or basic encryption utilities, we think there are better choices out there.

Month Reviewed: January 2007
+ FEET: Lowest cost per gigabyte on the street.
- METERS: Gets aced by the competition in performance
Verdict: 7
URL: www.patriotmem.com