New Patriot SSDs Use Latest JMicron Controller

News
By Kevin Parrish
published

Patriot launched a new line of SSDs using the JMicron JMF612 controller.

Patriot announced on Wednesday that its latest family of solid state drives (SSD), the Zephyr series, was designed around the JMicron JMF612 controller, offering native Windows 7 TRIM support. Using a controller level cache of 64 MB DDR2, the new line promises "stutter-free performance" while offering read speeds of up to 240 MB/s and write speeds of up to 180 MB/s (256 GB version only).

"Our Zephyr family of SSDs offer great performance, aggressive pricing and the inherent benefit of SSD technology over antiquated hard disk drives: quicker boot times and shorter application loading times," states Les Henry, Vice President of Engineering at Patriot. "Including a Zephyr SSD in your desktop or notebook upgrade plans provides one of the best bang-for-the buck improvements you can make to your system."

Now available for purchase, the Zephyr SSDs are offered in three capacities: 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. Although all three models provide the same 240 MB/s read speeds, the 180 GB model only offers write speeds of up to 145 MB/s--the 64 GB version writes even slower at 85 MB/s.

Newegg, CompUSA, Amazon,and other online retailers carry Patriot products, however the new drives haven't appeared as of this writing, so pricing is unknown at this point.

Kevin Parrish
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11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JasonAkkerman
    "antiquated hard disk drives"
    I wouldn't go that far. They still have a very real purpose.
    Reply
  • daworstplaya
    Jmicron = fail ... What a waste of flash nand. In some cases the Jmicron controllers are barely faster than platter harddrives.
    Reply
  • cadder
    Does the latest JMicron controller fix their previous problems?

    We can't call mechanical hard drives "antiquated" until they can be completely replaced by SSD's. Current SSD's don't have the pricing and/or capacity to build up much market share yet. For the most recent CAD machines I built I used VelociRaptors because our budget didn't allow a sufficient sized SSD to work as a proper boot drive.
    Reply
  • Some points:
    - 64 MB of DDR2 cache... seems like it's being used to avoid their stuttering problem rather than actually fixing the issue in the controller.
    - Random Read/Write speeds are missing from this blurb, can we have one standard way of announcing new products that marketing guys can't weasel away from Sequential READ/WRITE MB/s Random READ/WRITE MB/s.
    - JMicro has destroyed/tainted their brand name so completely with their earlier SSD controllers that it's doubtful if they can ever recover.
    Reply
  • husker
    I know this reasoning isn't scientific or technical but just an observation:
    Kingston's SSDNow V seriers uses the JMicron controller. On newegg these Kindgston SSDs are less expensive and are getting average 4 egg ratings while Patriot's previous (non-JMicron) SSDs are getting average ratings in the 2-3 egg range. I think maybe Patriot figured something out.
    Reply
  • nforce4max
    Unimpressive

    When I see any thing with JMircron I know to move on.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    "Now available for purchase, the Zephyr SSDs are offered in three capacities: 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. Although all three models provide the same 240 MB/s read speeds, the 180 GB model only offers write speeds of up to 145 MB/s--the 64 GB version writes even slower at 85 MB/s."

    180 GB model, do you mean 128 GB model?

    Anyway, for all the people dismissing this drive ahead of time: I hate all the old Jmicron controllers as much as the next guy. But there is no reason to prejudge this controller, wait until get some extensive reviews. We could always use some more competition in this field.

    As for the lack of random read/write speeds, I agree that sucks, but its not just this drive. A ton of SSD press releases omit this information. We'll just have to grumble about it until we get a proper review. Besides, if they did publish random speeds, would you trust the figure until someone like THG or AT tested it? :D
    Reply
  • proxy711
    Have you guys even been following SSD news? Jmicron hasn't had any issues in the past 2 generations....only the first generation had problems.
    Reply
  • gramps
    Didn't Tom's recent roundup of SSD's show that the drives using the newer Jmicron controllers (JM61x) still have some performance issues? Not like the original fiasco, but still quite tangible...
    Reply
  • g00ey
    I'm quite disappointed with JMicron's products. I've had two motherboards of different brands using JMicron as an extra SATA controller and it doesn't work properly in neither of them. The JMicron based SSD disks I've seen in tests so far shows a performance that is inferior to other SSD models.
    Reply