So today we'll be reviewing the Patriot Torqx SSD, the driver we received is the 128GB version. As we already explained in the introduction, this drive makes use of the new Indilinx controller. Key to this controller is that is has the ability to tie cache memory to it. In the case of the Patriot Torqx drives this is 64MB cache memory. Indilinx, sounds familiar eh? That's a spin-off company from Mtron, known for their quality server SSDs, and yes .. the very same controller is used on OCZ's Vertex line of products, and G.Skills Falcon SSDs and likely many more. Two brands controllers are the top dogs out there, this Indilinx controller and the ones from Samsung.

The choice of using an Indilinx controller inside the Torqx brings several advantages to this product in terms of overall speed and performance thanks to some additional bandwidth, reducing latency and overall throughput.

Now the controller itself is not faster or massively better than the ones used on cheaper SSD drives (JMicron) but the one thing that is important is that cache memory. SSDs need to fight off a bad habit, slow write times for really small and petit files, that is where the sore bottleneck of SSD drives is to be found.

The trick is that the Indilinx controller can be tied (and is) to an SDRAM buffer, 64MB to be precise, and that my friends helps massively in tackling the small write access issues I just mentioned. I've opened it up, let's have a look at the innards:

In the above photo we see the SSD all nekked. To the right the Samsung flash memory chips, to the upper left the Indilinx Barefoot controller chip and just below it 64MB cache memory from Elpida. All combined they form the heart and soul of the this SSD. 

The Patriot Torqx series SSD is available in several capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB: the read/write performance of the 128GB and 256GB drives are specified as 260/180 MB/Sec, while the 64GB drives are capable of a slightly slower write speed at 135 MB/Sec. Continuing, the seek time on these puppies is even more amazing; at less than 1ms -- 0.1ms as we actually can measure. The average seek time for a traditional HDD is roughly 9ms. Do the math.

These SSD drives will cost you roughly 80 to 100 USD per 32GB. The flash memory NAND type used is MLC. Pretty impressive for a product weighing 91 grams. Here are some features:

Features

• Available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities
• Interface: SATA I/II
• Raid Support: 0, 1, 0+1
• 256GB and 128GB: Sequential Read: up to 260MB/s Sequential Write: up to 180MB/s
• 64GB: Sequential Read: up to 220MB/s Sequential Write: up to 135MB/s
• Shock Resistant: 1500G/0.5ms
• Vibration Resistant: 20G/10~2000Hz with 3 Axis
• Operating Consumption & Power: DC 5V <550mA 2.75W
• Operating Temperature: 0C~70C
• Storage Temperature: -40C~ 85C
• MTBF: >2,500,000 Hours
• Data Retention: 5 years at 25C
• Data Reliability: Built in BCH 8, 12 and 16-bit ECC
• O/S Support: Windows®XP and Vista® Linux, and Mac OS X.
• Dimensions: 99.88 x 69.63x 9.3 mm
• Weight: 91g
• Certification: FCC/CE/RoHS
• 10 Year Warranty

Patriot labels the product with a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) of 2.5 million hours. I mentioned this a couple of times already but that really is a highly statistical figure and I just wish SSD manufacturers would just drop this value.

The drive we are testing today will cost you the pretty sum of roughly 349 ~ 399 USD, and priced similarly to the OCZ Vertex 120GB it is armed with a two year warranty. On the topic of warranty, the one thing I'd like to see improved is warranty, we say 5 years would be a very plausible term in this price range.

* update Patriot updated warranty towards an amazing 10 years (!)