Patriot Memory Wildfire SSD 120 GB Review

Patriot Memory Wildfire SSD 120 GB Review by Honorabili

In recent years we have seen SSDs drop a lot in price and are becoming more standard each passing day. Most people will get one just to run their operating system on as well as allocating all their virtual memory on it, since the performance benefits of an SSD over a typical hard drive are significant. We decided to test how significant this difference is by testing a popularly selling SSD versus a pretty strong hard drive. I tested the Patriot Memory Wildfire 120 GB SSD and compared it to my main system’s Seagate ST330006 51AS 3 TB hard drive.

For the testing suite I decided to use AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Disk Benchmark, and Crystal Disk Mark. Each of them have their own benefits, but the data will show us the real advantages of having an SSD over a hard drive.

Under the AS SSD Benchmark, the Wildfire yielded the following numbers:

Under the AS SSD Benchmark, my hard drive yielded the following numbers:

Let’s get down and dirty with the number analysis of the AS SSD Benchmark: (click picture for full resolution image)

Based on this data, the Wildfire was insanely faster than the hard drive in every performance aspect, not just in raw speed but in responsiveness as well. In a the pure MB/s tests, both including reading and writing, it was about 90.97 as fast as the hard drive. That is a huge difference and in the real world I felt this when I compared how fast the SSD would load games and copy data over in comparison to my hard drive. Under this benchmark, the Wildfire responds 203.29 times faster than the hard drive on the average for any kind of activity. The benchmark gave us a score where the Wildfire is 19.28 times as fast as our lovely hard drive.

Under the ATTO Benchmark, the Wildfire yielded the following numbers:

Under the ATTO Benchmark, my hard drive yielded the following numbers:

Let’s analyze the numbers of the ATTO Disk Benchmark results: (click picture for full resolution image)

If we look in detail at the data from the ATTO Disk Benchmark we see that for super small file transactions, the hard drive is actually faster but as data density increases it cannot keep up with the raw speed and superior hardware architecture of the Wildfire SSD. At one point the Wildfire is only 0.578 as fast as the hard drive but when we get to huge file operations the Wildfire is 3.148 as fast as the hard drive. On the average, ATTO shows us that the Wildfire is 2.088 as fast as the hard drive. This benchmark I think is both more and less useful than the other ones. It’s good for analyzing speed with data density but since in the real world you’re not going to do stuff based on data density it’s not that useful. It’s useful for a geek like me!

Under the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, the Wildfire yielded the following numbers:

Under the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, my hard drive yielded the following numbers: (click picture for full resolution image)

Numerical analysis of CrystalDiskMark data:

CrystalDiskMark just cares about raw MB/s performance tests. In this benchmark we see the Wildfire on the average is 70.59 as fast as our Seagate hard drive. Again, the speed difference is HUGE.

If I had to compare the difference between the Wildfire to my hard drive in car engine terms the Wildfire would be like a supercharged V12 and the hard drive would be an inline 6 engine. Sure the inline 6 gets the job done but it’s not a monstrous supercar engine like the Wildfire is.

An SSD feels as difference from a hard drive as a hard drive feels as fast as an old floppy disk. It’s like the load speed for a console that uses a cartridge versus one that uses slow CD technology. This technology is the present and future, now if only their price could drop further, we will all start using them as our primary drives, rather than just the performance enthusiasts using it for the majority.

As far as the Patriot Memory Wildfire SSD, I really like the packaging, the mount for the drive looks really cool, and the fact that it is MADE IN USA! I hadn’t seen that on a computer part for years and it really brought a smile to my face. Right now the cheapest Wildfire, which is the 120 GB one we tested, is sold at newegg for $224.99 (with rebate, if not 264.99) and that’s a good chunk of change but it’s not incredibly expensive. Most enthusiasts will spend easily $1,000 on a custom computer and that’s about a 22% difference which might make or break this option for some people. It depends on how much you need the crazy performance but as a system drive you will see a huge difference in your computer, that’s for sure. Load times will be a thing of the past.

I’ve had the Wildfire since about late August 2011 and I’ve used it a lot. I haven’t had any problems with it as far as reliability goes. I usually spend a good hour or two a day recording and editing a lot of audio and it’s been a dream to use this card to almost autosave my projects. The card also has been amazing for last minute backups of some of my client’s data that never back their stuff. I used it to open up their desktops and just copy stuff immediately off their dying machines. Really useful in the real IT world!

Conclusion:

If you’re a hardware enthusiast, you should be using this or another SSD already. If you’re in IT, I recommend having at least one for crazy last minute backups. Since I got the card the price has dropped to 224 dollars from the 300 it was when I first got it. It might go down in the future but it’s already becoming really affordable. The only advantage that hard drives have over SSDs are huge capacities and lower prices. For the performance, it’s totally worth having an SSD over just having a hard drive. I remember reading about SSDs in the mid 90s and I’m glad that they’re finally here in force. Welcome to the 21st century!

Views: 495