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Published in Reviews

Patriot TorqX 128GB SSD tested

by on20 July 2009

Index



As we mentioned earlier, solid state drives are way faster than traditional hard drives and we included results of our own Samsung F1 1TB drive as well as the results of previously tested OCZ Apex SSD. We also included the results of Patriot’s drive before and after the firmware update.

Our first tests with an early firmware ver. 1370 left us with a dilemma as Patriot TorqX simply failed in achieving the rated read speed of 260MB/s, as HD Tune Pro showed a maximum read speed of 200MB/s and a maximum write speed of 189.9MB/s.

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ATTO disk benchmark, was kinder to Patriot TorqX and maximum read and write were hovering around 247MB/s and up to 200MB/s depending on the file size. As you can see from these screenshots, minimum read and write speeds were 186.5MB/s and 147.4MB/s, and average was showing 188.7MB/s and 171.4MB/s.

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Even thought that read speeds were below the rated ones, write speeds certainly surprised us, as they were good 20MB/s over the rated maximum value.

We were pleasantly surprised when Patriot contacted us about the new firmware as we hoped that the read speeds would jump, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case, and it looks like we’ll have to wait for the next firmware update in order to get those up to rated speeds.

It did raise the read speed to up to 214.5MB/s in HD Tune which left it at an average of 201.3MB/s but it was still short from those rated 260MB/s. The write speed got up from a maximum of 189.8MB/s to 193.3MB/s which isn’t that much but it is still over the rated 180MB/s.

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ATTO Disk benchmark also felt a slight bump from the new firmware as this time we were seeing a maximum read of almost 250MB/s and a maximum write speeds of over 205MB/s.

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Just for fun, we compared it to Samsung’s F1 1TB traditional hard drive, and as you would suspect, even thought Samsung’s F1 is a decent hard drive, it came nowhere near Patriot TorqX 128GB SSD. Of course, this is not that fair as this HDD can be bought for as low as €70 while you have to spill over €350 for Patriot’s SSD.

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We decided to try these drives in SiSoft Sandra benchmark as well and as you can see from the results below, Samsung’s Spinpoint F1 is simply no match for the SSD. Samsung’s Spinpoint F1 1TB hard drive had a random access time of 13 and 2ms in write and read, while Patriot did 1ms in both.

We didn’t want to bother with copying files as it is clear that Samsung’s SpinPoint F1 is no match to the Patriot TorqX SSD drive and it would just be unfair.

Conclusion

SSD technology is still far away from being affordable, but it has always been that way with premium products and new technologies. Even Western Digital’s first Raptors were more expensive than the regular hard drives, and we don’t even want to start talking about SCSI hard drives.

When compared to the traditional HDD like 1TB Samsung Spinpoint which costs around €70, SSD sounds like a really expensive product. On the other hand, if you compare the read and write speeds the price of an SSD is pretty much self explanatory. Due to its “low capacity” SSD’s are most commonly used as an OS drive while the bigger and cheaper traditional hard drives are left for storage which is a great combination.

Patriot’s TorqX is currently listed for around €350 (US $379.99) which is not that expensive if you compare it to other solid state drives on the market, especially if you consider the fact that it has 64MB of cache and uses Indilinx controller which has proven to be a really good combination with MLC memory, as it gets rid of the “stuttering” problem.

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In addition to the 128GB model, Patriot also has 64GB and 256GB TorqX M28 256 and 128GB models which have 128MB of cache. So if 128GB is too much or too little you can always go for a different model, but bear in mind that 64GB model has somewhat lower read and write speeds.

Patriot’s TorqX is the fastest SSD that we laid our hands on so far, and we must compliment Patriot on the bundle and the firmware update ease of use. The lower than rated read speeds are not a big issue as it will probably be fixed by a next update, and higher than rated write speeds are certainly a plus, one plus that we really liked. 

When you take the whole picture into account, especially the fact that this is the first SSD that has 10 years of warranty, Patriot’s TorqX sounds like a great catch. We are more than happy to give it our recommended award.

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Last modified on 20 July 2009
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