It's sad that all these non-Samsung MLC NVMe SSDs can't even compete with the TLC 960 Evo... But then again, which has more endurance? VNAND TLC or 15nm MLC?
You need to specify Brand, Process, Controller and Firmware Version when comparing endurance
Mixing MLC and TLC also does not help in the least
I pay less over time for a better process like 40nm Samsung MLC than I do for a cheaper process like 15nm Toshiba MLC, even though the initial cost of the Samsung is higher
Likewise, you should only compare TLC with TLC
The only Non-Endurance issue I've ever had with 3D V-Nand is that I had to update Acronis True Image from the 2012 version to 2015/16 or 17 so the backups would restore correctly
can't even compete? this SSD is priced about the same with a 850 EVO SATA3, and a lot faster. try not to compare it with other SSD's that cost double. in reviews they put it up against the best so you can have an ideea where it sits.
"Hellfire" - for a disk drive? If I buy this, I'd be promoting stupid naming. There's a point in such things where the prospective customer is simply being insulted. Hard to define, but "I know it when I see it".
You got it. Seems kind of odd that a teck company marketing a retail product would use a naming convention associated with weapons being used around the world to kill and maim people. Wanna keep the politics away from your business? I vote with my dollar.
We should petition the Pentagon to request they stop this practice of buying weapons with mean names as well. The Hellfire seems like a great platform, but we do not like the name. Call it Fluffy Kittens and we'll purchase 10,00 of them.
The problem is that there's nothing cheap about these. In fact, price per GB for SSDs seems to be going up even for the 'just good enough' crowd! And after all these years capacities are still a joke. To me, those are much bigger concerns than the name given to the drive. But we're going to have to put up with it for quite a while by simply not buying anything. Companies are going to keep doing this as there's apparently a large part of the buying public who are determined to throw pearls before swine on overpriced and low capacity SSDs. At least Patriot has done SOMETHING about the performance aspect.
You guys should use these traces to measure power consumption in CPU reviews. There is way too much focus on "max load". Guess AT does have some more relevant tests for laptop reviews but in CPU reviews, the power section is tragic.
Hmm so that can distort the SSD perf tests a bit for workloads that are CPU heavy. Maybe a dedicated article would be interesting. Even more so when you get Xpoint drives, next year i guess for proper capacities. Guess the SSD power tests could factor in perf and CPU utilization for extra accuracy.
The distortion should be minimal. Recording the traces in the first place incurred very little overhead. The trace doesn't perfectly capture the dependencies between operations, but the playback does preserve the ordering and queue depths and relative timing, except that long disk idle periods are cut short. I'll cover this in detail in when I launch the 2017 test suite.
Just to be clear, i was thinking the CPU becoming a bottleneck in some situations and that there might be significant differences in CPU load per unit of perf between SSDs that could lead to significant differences in real usage.
"...a Phison E7 SSD might make sense at the 120 GB capacity point where Samsung has no offering..."
IF the performance of the 120 GB version is close to that of the 480 GB drive. It appears that Patriot isn't sending the lower capacity drives out to reviewers. The link given below reports that the 240 GB model providing about 86% of the speed of the 480 GB model. That number may not be terribly meaningful because the reported speeds vary a lot (presumably because some drives were fuller than others when the benchmarks were run), but it seems to be the best data we have. The law of diminishing returns suggests that the performance gap between the 120 and 240 GB models will be greater than the gap between the 240 and 480 GB models. So it seems quite possible that the 120 GB model is a real dog.
We're purposely slow to switch OSes so that we can work out the kinks first. Win10 has taken a bit of time to get to place nicely with our SSD tests, though we should be ready to finally roll it out in the next couple of months.
After this review, I have two engineering samples and one retail drive that I'll be reviewing with the 2015 test suite, and then I'll be switching over to the 2017 test suite using Windows 10. If all goes well and if I get enough of the back catalog of drives re-tested with the new suite in time, the WD Black may even get reviewed with the new test suite and the 2015 data will just go into the Bench archives.
But you're probably overestimating how important the switch to Windows 10 is for SSD reviews. The Windows 10 NVMe driver still sucks.
windows 10 provides inconsistent results (unless you disable everything or use windows 10 LTSB and still disable everything) where as you can use windows 8 and have consistent results
Newegg has a 1 TB Mushkin Reactor for $229.99 today. Until Nvme prices come down (the increase appears to be completely artificial as they are not more expensive to make) I will be on the sidelines enjoying my "slow" Sata 3 SSD.
Interesting how several sites tested this drive, and: -AT criticizes it for being the slowest MLC NVMe SSD and not being price compeitive with the MyDigitalSSD BPX -Tomshardware also criticized pricing, wrt the 950 Pro (but they also had data on the BPX and showed the Hellfire slightly ahead) -thessdreview praises it for getting close to the 960 Pro and RD400 while being less expensive
Everyone's probably right at once. From AT's price table, it looks like the Hellfire is a decent PCIe entry at 480 GB. It's cheaper than drives that outperform it while beating the cheaper BPX and 600p.
But I don't think NVMe M.2 drives are worth it right now. They're expensive, power hungry, run hot, and are harder to cool (especially next to a graphics card). I have the M8pe, and it's often hard to feel the difference compared to a good MLC SATA drive. If software changes direction to be far more IO heavy it could be worth it.
Ipl T20 2017 is likely to be scheduled to start from April 3rd 2017 to May 26th, 2017. While, opening ceremony and final match of IPL 2017 is to be placed on Eden Gardens, Kolkata. https://iplilive.org
Perhaps unrelated but what is it with these naming conventions? Hellfire, Bonecrusher, Gravedigger, MurderBox. It's not badass at all, it's ridiculous.
Or Ripjaws...ugh where's my dentist at? It must work or at least not hurt sales too much if companies haven't stopped doing it yet. In fact, it's probably less about the name and more about product differentiation. Everyone sells a NVMe SSD but only one company sells a Hellfire NVMe SSD. Everyone sells a 32GB dual channel 3000MHz DDR4 kit but only one company sells a Viper version thereof for instance. Doing so, even with a relatively stupid name, leads to better brand recognition among consumers and we all know based on our experiences reading peoples' comments about computer hardware, cars, staplers, and energy drinks how important building brand loyalty becomes for those customers that can be sucked into the marketing.
Wait... so the ASUS Z97 Pro has NVMe M.2 PCIe 3 x4 ? .... I thought the motherbaord was limited to a M.2 PCIe 2x4 "2000 MB/max"........ because I have a ASUS Z97 PRO" wifi" and these means I can get a M.2 card /o/ , I was afraid my m.2 slot was limited and useless
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43 Comments
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lilmoe - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
It's sad that all these non-Samsung MLC NVMe SSDs can't even compete with the TLC 960 Evo... But then again, which has more endurance? VNAND TLC or 15nm MLC?bug77 - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
V-NAND TLC has about the same number of p/e cycles as planar MLC.Bullwinkle J Moose - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
"Which has more endurance" is a false choice!You need to specify Brand, Process, Controller and Firmware Version when comparing endurance
Mixing MLC and TLC also does not help in the least
I pay less over time for a better process like 40nm Samsung MLC than I do for a cheaper process like 15nm Toshiba MLC, even though the initial cost of the Samsung is higher
Likewise, you should only compare TLC with TLC
The only Non-Endurance issue I've ever had with 3D V-Nand is that I had to update Acronis True Image from the 2012 version to 2015/16 or 17 so the backups would restore correctly
guidryp - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
That makes no sense.MLC has more endurance than TLC.
Adding more layers to TLC doesn't improve endurance.
lilmoe - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link
That's 40nm TLC vs 15nm MLC... I'd vouch for Samsung's process, and vertically integrated product.bogdan.anghel1986 - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
can't even compete? this SSD is priced about the same with a 850 EVO SATA3, and a lot faster. try not to compare it with other SSD's that cost double. in reviews they put it up against the best so you can have an ideea where it sits.do you compare a Lamborghini with a VW Polo ?
lilmoe - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link
You call 20$ a difference for NVMe drives? Really? Lambos cost 20 times more than Polos, the heck is wrong with you?Arbie - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
"Hellfire" - for a disk drive? If I buy this, I'd be promoting stupid naming. There's a point in such things where the prospective customer is simply being insulted. Hard to define, but "I know it when I see it".Murloc - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Everybody has a naming scheme. What's wrong with copying names already used by weapons, for a company named patriot?Hellfire sounds stupid but other missile names aren't much better, or they're boring.
BrokenCrayons - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Well, have a nap and then FIRE ZE MISSILES!!!bug77 - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Patriot Minuteman! :DYaldabaoth - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Perhaps they are referring to the thermal characteristics.lmcd - Saturday, February 11, 2017 - link
"Logged in just to upvote this" -- comment systems in 2000extide - Saturday, February 11, 2017 - link
ehh back in that era "upvoting" wasn't a thing -- people would just say "this" or "x2"romrunning - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Looking at its performance, they should have named it the "Campfire"! :)BurntMyBacon - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
I'm going to go with "Stinger" ... to keep consistent with the missile theme.Who is it that's getting stung again?
random2 - Sunday, February 12, 2017 - link
You got it. Seems kind of odd that a teck company marketing a retail product would use a naming convention associated with weapons being used around the world to kill and maim people. Wanna keep the politics away from your business? I vote with my dollar.Holliday75 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
We should petition the Pentagon to request they stop this practice of buying weapons with mean names as well. The Hellfire seems like a great platform, but we do not like the name. Call it Fluffy Kittens and we'll purchase 10,00 of them.Stas - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link
triggered?Gothmoth - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
samsung all the way.. this stuff is just for cheapos.....Magichands8 - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
The problem is that there's nothing cheap about these. In fact, price per GB for SSDs seems to be going up even for the 'just good enough' crowd! And after all these years capacities are still a joke. To me, those are much bigger concerns than the name given to the drive. But we're going to have to put up with it for quite a while by simply not buying anything. Companies are going to keep doing this as there's apparently a large part of the buying public who are determined to throw pearls before swine on overpriced and low capacity SSDs. At least Patriot has done SOMETHING about the performance aspect.Murloc - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
you're wrong, I can now buy something double the size and with better performance at the same price I bought my 840 evo.MR_Roberto - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
ehh? tell me what product that is.. i want to buy it xDphexac - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Now, that is one crappy SSD.jjj - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
You guys should use these traces to measure power consumption in CPU reviews.There is way too much focus on "max load". Guess AT does have some more relevant tests for laptop reviews but in CPU reviews, the power section is tragic.
Billy Tallis - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Unfortunately, these traces are just playing back the I/O, not actually re-running the whole application. The CPU load they present is trivial.jjj - Sunday, February 12, 2017 - link
Hmm so that can distort the SSD perf tests a bit for workloads that are CPU heavy.Maybe a dedicated article would be interesting. Even more so when you get Xpoint drives, next year i guess for proper capacities.
Guess the SSD power tests could factor in perf and CPU utilization for extra accuracy.
Billy Tallis - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
The distortion should be minimal. Recording the traces in the first place incurred very little overhead. The trace doesn't perfectly capture the dependencies between operations, but the playback does preserve the ordering and queue depths and relative timing, except that long disk idle periods are cut short. I'll cover this in detail in when I launch the 2017 test suite.BurntMyBacon - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Your efforts are appreciated.jjj - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Just to be clear, i was thinking the CPU becoming a bottleneck in some situations and that there might be significant differences in CPU load per unit of perf between SSDs that could lead to significant differences in real usage.KAlmquist - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
"...a Phison E7 SSD might make sense at the 120 GB capacity point where Samsung has no offering..."IF the performance of the 120 GB version is close to that of the 480 GB drive. It appears that Patriot isn't sending the lower capacity drives out to reviewers. The link given below reports that the 240 GB model providing about 86% of the speed of the 480 GB model. That number may not be terribly meaningful because the reported speeds vary a lot (presumably because some drives were fuller than others when the benchmarks were run), but it seems to be the best data we have. The law of diminishing returns suggests that the performance gap between the 120 and 240 GB models will be greater than the gap between the 240 and 480 GB models. So it seems quite possible that the 120 GB model is a real dog.
http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/184918/Patr...
HideOut - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
So why is a supposedly leading tech site doing their review on Windows 8.1? There are already features and such unusable if you don't have 10Ryan Smith - Saturday, February 11, 2017 - link
We're purposely slow to switch OSes so that we can work out the kinks first. Win10 has taken a bit of time to get to place nicely with our SSD tests, though we should be ready to finally roll it out in the next couple of months.HomeworldFound - Sunday, February 12, 2017 - link
That basically means in several years when nobody is reading any more.Billy Tallis - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
After this review, I have two engineering samples and one retail drive that I'll be reviewing with the 2015 test suite, and then I'll be switching over to the 2017 test suite using Windows 10. If all goes well and if I get enough of the back catalog of drives re-tested with the new suite in time, the WD Black may even get reviewed with the new test suite and the 2015 data will just go into the Bench archives.But you're probably overestimating how important the switch to Windows 10 is for SSD reviews. The Windows 10 NVMe driver still sucks.
leexgx - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
windows 10 provides inconsistent results (unless you disable everything or use windows 10 LTSB and still disable everything) where as you can use windows 8 and have consistent resultsfanofanand - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Newegg has a 1 TB Mushkin Reactor for $229.99 today. Until Nvme prices come down (the increase appears to be completely artificial as they are not more expensive to make) I will be on the sidelines enjoying my "slow" Sata 3 SSD.chlamchowder - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Interesting how several sites tested this drive, and:-AT criticizes it for being the slowest MLC NVMe SSD and not being price compeitive with the MyDigitalSSD BPX
-Tomshardware also criticized pricing, wrt the 950 Pro (but they also had data on the BPX and showed the Hellfire slightly ahead)
-thessdreview praises it for getting close to the 960 Pro and RD400 while being less expensive
Everyone's probably right at once. From AT's price table, it looks like the Hellfire is a decent PCIe entry at 480 GB. It's cheaper than drives that outperform it while beating the cheaper BPX and 600p.
But I don't think NVMe M.2 drives are worth it right now. They're expensive, power hungry, run hot, and are harder to cool (especially next to a graphics card). I have the M8pe, and it's often hard to feel the difference compared to a good MLC SATA drive. If software changes direction to be far more IO heavy it could be worth it.
ravansranu - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Ipl T20 2017 is likely to be scheduled to start from April 3rd 2017 to May 26th, 2017. While, opening ceremony and final match of IPL 2017 is to be placed on Eden Gardens, Kolkata.https://iplilive.org
FrogSpawn - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Perhaps unrelated but what is it with these naming conventions? Hellfire, Bonecrusher, Gravedigger, MurderBox. It's not badass at all, it's ridiculous.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Or Ripjaws...ugh where's my dentist at? It must work or at least not hurt sales too much if companies haven't stopped doing it yet. In fact, it's probably less about the name and more about product differentiation. Everyone sells a NVMe SSD but only one company sells a Hellfire NVMe SSD. Everyone sells a 32GB dual channel 3000MHz DDR4 kit but only one company sells a Viper version thereof for instance. Doing so, even with a relatively stupid name, leads to better brand recognition among consumers and we all know based on our experiences reading peoples' comments about computer hardware, cars, staplers, and energy drinks how important building brand loyalty becomes for those customers that can be sucked into the marketing.MR_Roberto - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Wait... so the ASUS Z97 Pro has NVMe M.2 PCIe 3 x4 ? .... I thought the motherbaord was limited to a M.2 PCIe 2x4 "2000 MB/max"........ because I have a ASUS Z97 PRO" wifi" and these means I can get a M.2 card /o/ , I was afraid my m.2 slot was limited and uselessUser11bfw - Saturday, July 28, 2018 - link
For no civic product „Hellfire“ is a reasonable name. Using the association with a deadly weapon exhibits a disgusting taste.