Patriot Inferno Review (120GB)

SandForce solid state drives seem to be the hotness in the market right now, and why wouldn't they be? The SandForce controllers are popular pieces of technology for a reason: their design allows for dispensing with drive cache, and they perform awfully fast. It's no surprise many manufacturers have produced drives based on SandForce hardware, and today we have the 120GB Patriot Inferno SSD (PI120GS25SSDR) on the bench.

The Patriot Inferno SSD ships in capacities of 60GB (PI60GS25SSDR), 120GB, and 240GB (PI240GS25SSDR). Specifications list the SandForce controller as the SF-1222; people used to seeing SandForce controllers noted simply as “SF-1200” might be excused for thinking this is new silicon, but it's basically the same controller being used in all consumer-grade SandForce-based drives.

Since there's such a healthy number of SF-1200-based drives on the market, we'll be looking both at Patriot's implementation of the controller along with what the Inferno brings to the table against the competition.

Specifications:

• SandForce SF-1222 drive controller
• 120GB Unformatted Capacity
• 111.79GB Formatted Capacity
• 285 MB/sec Sustained Read Speed
• 275 MB/sec Sustained Write Speed
• Includes 3.5" bracket
• TRIM support (O/S dependent)
• Data Retention: 5+ years at 25 C
• Data Reliability: Built in BCH 16-bit ECC & 24-bit ECC
• 4K Random Write IOPS up to 14K
• 4K Random Read IOPS up to 5K
• Mean Time Between Failure: Greater than 1,500,000 hours

Aesthetics

Mostly appropriate to its “Inferno” nomenclature, the Patriot Inferno SSD ships in a wine-colored shroud with a basic black label on the top noting the model and capacity. The bottom of the drive is a basic silver plate held in place with Philips-head screws covered by warranty stickers to deter disassembly. The unit is solid, aided by the all-metal casing.

Disassembly

As with all SSDs we disassembled the unit to get a better look. The inside of the Patriot Inferno is about what one would expect for a SandForce-based SSD, with the SF-1222 controller sitting in the center of eight 8GB flash modules; astute viewers will note the Patriot Inferno uses the same flash the recently reviewed OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD does. In fact, the board layout is extremely similar to the OWC's.

The flipside of the single PCB has the other eight 8GB modules. These are Intel 29F65G08CAMDB modules; as mentioned before, these are consistent with the rest of the SandForce SSDs we've reviewed.

Synthetic Benchmarks

We're testing the Patriot Inferno primarily against other SandForce drives, as well as the ubiquitous 160GB Intel X25-M. Drives are tested on our Dell XPS 9000 test bench and benchmarked through the 3.0Gb/s Intel ICH10R SATA controller, running in AHCI mode with TRIM enabled. Our test bench runs Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

We start out with synthetic benchmarks, employing IOMeter and CrystalDiskMark to get a general feel for drive performance. When testing SSDs, we use the standard 512-byte test alongside a 4K test.

Our first test is IOMeter's 2MB sequential transfer test; this test is helpful in seeing how well the drives can hit their advertised transfer speeds, and can prove that not all SF-1200 implementations are equal.

 

Source : www.storagereview.com

Tags : SandForce, Patriot Inferno SSD, Patriot, PCB, disassembly

PNY GeForce GTS 450 1GB XLR8 Review

Warranty : 5 Years
Price : $129 USD

For all intents and purposes, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB isn’t what we would call a high performance graphics card but it does fit well into NVIDIA’s current lineup. It competes exceedingly well against the HD 5750 and sometimes catches up with the HD 5770 which should make it appealing to a wide swath of the budget-conscious market.

Companies like ASUS, EVGA, MSI and Gigabyte have decided to release overclocked editions of the GTS 450 and in our initial reviews it was made quite apparent that value-added products will likely carry sales of this card. Instead of banking on higher clock speeds or price augmenting custom designs, some of NVIDIA’s board partners have decided to go a different way towards catching people’s interest: by adding items to the card’s bundles. PNY has done exactly this with their XLR8 series.

Even though the “accelerate” moniker placed on this PNY product may hint at higher performance, it is in fact a reference card with stock clock speeds. What really distinguish it from the competition are two main factors: PNY’s warranty and their included bundle. While their lifetime warranty is reserved for the GTX-branded NVIDIA cards, PNY still saddles their GTS 450 XLR8 with a 5-year warranty. This puts it head and shoulders above most of the competition. In addition, the bundle has been expanded to include a 14 day / 7 hour trial to StarCraft II and a pair of Sony movie downloads. We will be touching on the download service and ESEA membership a bit later in the review but for the time being, let’s just say they are worthwhile features.

It goes without saying that PNY’s departure from the usual “let’s overclock it and add a cool heatsink” mentality many board partners take is a breath of fresh air. Considering the XLR8 doesn’t cost any more than a reference card, things definitely look like they are on the right track.

Source : www.hardwarecanucks.com

Tags : GeForce, NVIDIA, GeForce GTS 450, PNY, cool heatsink, Sony, ASUS, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte

ASUS GeForce GT 430 1GB Review

Product Number : ENGT430/DI/1GD3 (LP)
Price : Approx. $80 USD
Warranty : 3 years

The entry level graphics card market isn’t one which garners all that much attention but sales at the sub-$99 price points can weigh heavily upon a company’s balance sheet. This category of GPUs may not be all that relevant for the vast majority of DIYers, gamers or overclockers but it holds extreme interest for HTPC users, people on a tight budget and large system builders like Dell, Lenovo and HP. At its most basic an entry level dedicated graphics card is supposed to offer a broad feature set and low power consumption while significantly outperforming integrated solutions.

For the last year or so, the lower price points have been dominated by strong ATI offerings in the form of the HD 5570 and HD 5550 along with their GDDR5 “refreshes” that were introduced a few months ago. NVIDIA has tried to hang tenaciously on by offering the $79 GT 220 but in the face of DX11-totting competition, buying an outdated card wasn’t all that appealing for many consumers. However, the GT 220 is now being replaced at the $75 to $80 price point with the GT 430; a card that uses the new GF 108 core. 

The goals for the GF 108 aren’t all that lofty but it does plug a gaping hole in NVIDIA’s current lineup. Both the notebook and desktop markets will likely benefit from the additional features and performance the GT 430 and its mobile sibling the GT 435 bring to the table. Meanwhile, consumers will now have some additional options when looking for a budget friendly, low end graphics card..

The GT 430 also brings some functionality to the table that the outgoing GT 220 was lacking. Bitstreaming of lossless TrueHD and DTS Master Audio tracks (an integral part of the Blu-ray experience), DX11 compatibility have been added which brings its capabilities up to the same level as the competition. NVIDIA bills this as a perfect digital media graphics card and it is hard not to believe them. 

This is a market segment which may soon be dominated by upcoming AMD and Intel CPU / GPU combo processors. That being said, NVIDIA is putting their best foot forward to try and wrangle in as much market share as possible before the inevitable entry of Sandy Bridge and Llano processors

Source : www.hardwarecanucks.com

Tags : NVIDIA, AMD, CPU, GeForce, ASUS, GT 430, Dell, Lenovo, HP, ATI, Intel,