Patriot Pyro 120GB SandForce SF-2281 Solid State Drive Review

Introduction

We've already seen Patriot's low cost SSD offering for 2011, the Torqx 2 using a new Phison controller. Then we saw the 2011 flagship Wildfire that pairs a SandForce SF-2281 controller with synchronous IMFT flash, the current go-to combination for the best performance available. Today we are looking at the product that has been shoehorned between the Torqx 2 and Wildfire, the Pyro.

The Patriot Pyro uses the same SandForce controller as the Wildfire, a SF-2281, but pairs it with asynchronous IMFT flash. This combination produces a good cost friendly product out of the gate, but in the past we've observed long term performance issues that arise as the drives fill with data. SandForce is aware of the performance issues and the fact that we really don't like some of the performance we've seen from drives filled at 50% capacity, and they've been working on the firmware to increase performance. Our 120GB Pyro sample shipped to us with the latest firmware and we'll keep an eye on the Fill Rate Performance in this article and see what's been done and how the Pyro performs.

SandForce has actually been working on the firmware for all of their products and we're seeing some nice performance increases with almost every new release. At the same time, partners like Patriot have been working on their pricing. This is good news for the consumer and we are now seeing SandForce based SSDs at prices that are not only easy to swallow, but to be honest, they are damn near unbelievable.

Let's tackle pricing, availability and the current Patriot SSD lineup on the specifications page.