Patriot 64GB Warp Alabama

Unlike a lot of SSD manufacturers, Patriot has put some effort into branding and packaging its drives. The company currently supplies three different Warp drives, this 64GB model, a 128MB model reviewed separately and a diminutive 32GB model.




The 64GB Warp uses MLC NAND flash, so it offers nearly three times more gigabytes per pound than a typical SLC NAND flash drive. However, MLC NAND flash has a lower number of write cycles than SLC NAND flash, hence the comparatively low 1.5 million hour MTBF. MLC NAND flash also has a much higher write latency than SLC NAND flash, which can lead to annoying pauses while the memory controller stalls before writing data. Patriot boldly claims that the 64GB Warp can read at up to 175MB/sec and write at up to 100MB/sec.




In our tests, the 64GB Warp's average read speed was 144.3MB/sec - a lot lower than Patriot claims, but still one of the fastest results for a flash drive. However, HD Tach 3 RW measured the drive's average write speed as a mere 49.2MB/sec. There are a number of causes for the 64GB Warp's highly variable write speed, but the principal cause is the high write latency of the JMicron JMF602 memory controller. Although this didn't have a disastrous effect on all the benchmark tests, it means that Windows sometimes pauses while waiting for the controller to start writing data to the memory. As a result, the 64GB Warp was easily beaten by the Intel 80GB X25-M, which has a low-latency memory controller.




Like all the MLC NAND flash drives that use the JMicron JMF602 memory controller, the 64GB Warp is a very inconsistent performer. On the plus side, it's much cheaper and faster than 64GB flash drives were a year ago, but the variable performance means we can only recommend it for laptops, not high-performance desktops.

Author: James Gorbold & Antony Leather

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