The Patriot Hellfire M.2 480GB Review: Phison NVMe Tested
by Billy Tallis on February 10, 2017 8:30 AM ESTRandom Read Performance
The random read test requests 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, which is filled before the test starts. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The random read performance of the Patriot Hellfire is disappointing, even when aided by a heatsink. Samsung's SATA SSDs outperform the Patriot Hellfire, and the Plextor M8Pe is twice as fast. The PNY CS2211—based on the same NAND and Phison's S10 SATA SSD controller—is the most embarrassing drive for the Hellfire to lose to.
With no particular advantage in power consumption, the Patriot Hellfire gets a very poor efficiency score for random reads.
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The poor random read performance at lower queue depths continues at higher queue depths, and the Patriot Hellfire cannot catch up to the Samsung 850 Pro without a heatsink.
Random Write Performance
The random write test writes 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test is limited to a 16GB portion of the drive, and the drive is empty save for the 16GB test file. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The random write performance of the Patriot Hellfire is relatively good, but it is not in the top tier. The average score with a heatsink is actually slightly lower than without, likely because the heatsink allows for higher performance early in the test, and then the drive's spare area starts to run out sooner.
The Patriot Hellfire delivers better efficiency than most other NVMe SSDs and thanks to its good performance it is even substantially more efficient than the lower-power SATA SSDs.
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With or without a heatsink, the Patriot Hellfire's random write speed tops out at QD4 around 600MB/s. Most SSDs experience little to no improvement past this point. The Plextor M8Pe continues to slowly improve, but at QD4 its performance is sub-par.
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Magichands8 - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
The problem is that there's nothing cheap about these. In fact, price per GB for SSDs seems to be going up even for the 'just good enough' crowd! And after all these years capacities are still a joke. To me, those are much bigger concerns than the name given to the drive. But we're going to have to put up with it for quite a while by simply not buying anything. Companies are going to keep doing this as there's apparently a large part of the buying public who are determined to throw pearls before swine on overpriced and low capacity SSDs. At least Patriot has done SOMETHING about the performance aspect.Murloc - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
you're wrong, I can now buy something double the size and with better performance at the same price I bought my 840 evo.MR_Roberto - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
ehh? tell me what product that is.. i want to buy it xDphexac - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Now, that is one crappy SSD.jjj - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
You guys should use these traces to measure power consumption in CPU reviews.There is way too much focus on "max load". Guess AT does have some more relevant tests for laptop reviews but in CPU reviews, the power section is tragic.
Billy Tallis - Friday, February 10, 2017 - link
Unfortunately, these traces are just playing back the I/O, not actually re-running the whole application. The CPU load they present is trivial.jjj - Sunday, February 12, 2017 - link
Hmm so that can distort the SSD perf tests a bit for workloads that are CPU heavy.Maybe a dedicated article would be interesting. Even more so when you get Xpoint drives, next year i guess for proper capacities.
Guess the SSD power tests could factor in perf and CPU utilization for extra accuracy.
Billy Tallis - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
The distortion should be minimal. Recording the traces in the first place incurred very little overhead. The trace doesn't perfectly capture the dependencies between operations, but the playback does preserve the ordering and queue depths and relative timing, except that long disk idle periods are cut short. I'll cover this in detail in when I launch the 2017 test suite.BurntMyBacon - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Your efforts are appreciated.jjj - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Just to be clear, i was thinking the CPU becoming a bottleneck in some situations and that there might be significant differences in CPU load per unit of perf between SSDs that could lead to significant differences in real usage.