The Patriot Hellfire M.2 480GB Review: Phison NVMe Tested
by Billy Tallis on February 10, 2017 8:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Patriot Hellfire's average data rate on The Destroyer is slightly better than the fastest SATA SSD, but it is clearly the slowest MLC NVMe SSD in this bunch, and half the speed of Samsung's best.
The Patriot Hellfire squanders some of the latency advantages of NVMe, with an average service time that is sitting in the middle of the gap between SATA SSDs and other MLC NVMe SSDs.
The Patriot Hellfire ties with the aging Intel SSD 750 for the number of latency outliers beyond 100ms, but at the 10ms level it is only barely ahead of the best SATA drive and has almost three times as many outliers as the next slowest NVMe SSD.
As with most NVMe SSDs, the Patriot Hellfire burns substantially more energy over the course of The Destroyer than any good SATA SSD. Samsung remains the only company to deliver a PCIe SSD that is on par with SATA SSDs for this power usage metric.
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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!!!