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Given what we had already seen from the previous Sandforce-based SSDs, the Patriot Inferno 100GB was never going to disappoint in terms of performance. However while Patriot seems to be leading the industry with their warranty, they are quite behind when it comes to pricing and firmware.
The current asking price appears to be around $370 US, while G.Skill are asking $360 US for their 120GB Phoenix Pro which also uses the SandForce SF-1200 controller. Then we have the Corsair Force 120GB for $350 US and the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB can be had for just $320 US, both feature the SandForce SF-1200 controller with the latest firmware. When compared to the popular Intel X25-M, the Patriot Inferno is certainly more costly, with a higher price per gigabyte, but you also get a similar increase in performance. The biggest momentum killer for the Patriot Inferno, which also plagued other early SandForce-based SSD drives, is the memory that must be set aside for the DuraWrite technology. This is by far the largest factor affecting the cost per gigabyte rate of these drives, though a new firmware has corrected the issue.
As a result, the Intel X25-M currently costs around $2.81/GB, while the new Patriot Inferno will cost a staggering $3.70 per gigabyte if the list price of $370 holds still. However the price per gigabyte could improve shortly if Patriot issues the same firmware as Corsair, OCZ and G.Skill to reduce the over-provisioning, turning this 100GB drive into a 120GB drive. This would significantly improve the drives value, reducing the cost per gigabyte to around $3.00, placing it on more even ground with the Intel X25-M. Another big question mark over the Patriot Inferno and other SandForce SSDs is reliability. In fact, we are still a little dubious regarding SSD reliability in general, and with good reason as discussed earlier in the review. Although we have already seen two pre-production SandForce SSDs fail on our test bed, we are yet to break a production model. That said, our original production Vertex 2 (SandForce SF-1200) drive is not even 3 months old yet, so it still has a long way to go before proving itself. Therefore, we are also keen to see how the Patriot Inferno 100GB holds up over the coming months and years to come. Those cautious about where they invest their hard earned cash would be wise to wait and see how these new Inferno SSDs fare, and of course this goes for any solid-state drive based on the new SandForce controllers. However, making the Inferno purchase significantly less risky is the impressive 5 year warranty, which we believe is unmatched by the competition. This lengthy warranty should attract heavy power users, as it means they do not have to be as conservative with the Inferno. After all, at some point in time all SSDs will fail to write data, and it is nice to know that an investment in the Inferno will not be written off within a 5 year period. Bottom-line, the new Patriot Inferno has proven to deliver top notch performance with an unbeatable warranty, but we are hoping improvements can be made on the pricing side soon, while we'd also be careful about the reliability of the drives, at least until things settle down with SandForce drives shipping in more massive quantities. |
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Dave P |
Posted on: 06/30/2010 01:50 PM
I have one of these drives. I have asked Patriot if you are going to fix the capacity size like other makers. No reply yet. Please update the review with any info about this if you can find out when and if they will release a new firmware. Ohh and nice review. |
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Richie |
Posted on: 06/30/2010 09:51 PM
The performance of these things is getting better but the price is still insane. It was interesting to read about the reliability issues. Thanks for the hard work and keep it up. |
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Peter |
Posted on: 07/01/2010 11:48 AM
If you buy a 10-pack, 1 TDK 1.44MB floppy-disk will cost you about 0.50$ .. buy 700 and you will have about a GB worth of storage for the super-cheap price of only 350$ . Or you could buy 3 Corsair Flash Voyager 32 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drives at the bargain-price of 93.99$ each = 281.97$ for 96GB unformatted capacity .. and about 15 MB/s write-speed under ideal conditions . You still think SSD's are "expensive" or could it be that electro-mechanical HDD's are so dirt-cheap that it messes with your perception of what "expensive" is ? |
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ProX |
Posted on: 07/01/2010 01:31 PM
hahahahah nice one Peter. You are right they have it all wrong LOL |
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Bluescreendeath |
Posted on: 07/07/2010 12:54 PM
This SSD is HOT  |
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cynthia nelson Posts: 1 Joined: 2010-07-03 |
Posted on: 07/03/2010 06:21 AM
I appreciate the concern which is been rose. The things need to be sorted out because it is about the individual but it can be with everyone. |
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kenny |
Posted on: 07/04/2010 09:33 PM
nice looking drive and the results are great. shame they don't make a smaller cheaper version. |
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Bowser |
Posted on: 07/12/2010 03:20 AM
I think the warranty is really important for these things given the price. I have already had my Vertex die on me once, it was still under warranty which was good but I did loose the data that I failed to back up. Not that much can be done about that  |
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Chootia |
Posted on: 07/21/2010 10:10 PM
Its a shame that 100GB is the smallest drive they make. I would love to get a pair of 50's for RAID1. Looks like I will have to go with Corsair or OCZ. |