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Comparison Products
We select relevant drives for comparison to keep our charts more readable and give you a better sense of how each drive compares with similarly priced solutions. In most cases, you will not be looking at a 4TB Patriot Viper VP593 thinking that it’s a good way to save money on your newest barebones build. This is a high-end drive, and even if it’s intended to be on the low end of that pricing range, if it struggles, you need to know about it.
We begin with the two heavy hitters: the SanDisk WD Black SN8100 and the Samsung 9100 Pro. WD/SanDisk and Samsung have long made the drives by which all are judged, and any high-end review needs to incorporate their data. Crucial's T710 and Kingston's Fury Renegade G5 demonstrate what different flash can do on a cutting-edge platform, with the knowledge that SanDisk’s solution has unique firmware in comparison. We’re also looking at what Phison has planned with its E28 SSD controller – we have a review of a retail drive coming up next – and what it can still muster for its original E26 with the Sabrent Rocket 5. Rounding out the list, we have the very similar Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade, which is a direct competitor to the PV593, and the DRAM-less Biwin Black Opal X570, which is also vying for the niche “budget” high-end PCIe 5.0 market segment.
Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark
Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and we also include notes about which drives may be future-proofed.
The Patriot Viper PV593 is a great games drive if you’re dead set on having a high-end PCIe 5.0 SSD for that. Yeah, it’s nowhere near the fastest in 3DMark, but it’s still very fast and faster than any PCIe 40 SSD. It should provide ample performance for DirectStorage titles when they arrive. You don’t need cutting-edge hardware for gaming but having enough space – 4TB is a good size – is important. Is the PV593 overkill for this? Absolutely, but you can say you have a high-end drive and potentially save some money at the same time, if that’s your thing.
Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark
PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.
We’d say the same for productivity. The PV593 is fast enough that your workstation or HEDT won’t complain about it. Again, there are faster drives, but this will beat any PCIe 4.0, and it should be able to do it at a lower price than its peers. Well, theoretically anyway. We’re still waiting for prices to settle down, but Patriot needs to aim in that direction. If you want the very best, we recommend waiting for E28-based drives, though the Black SN8100 is an excellent pick if you need a drive right away.
Console Testing — PlayStation 5 Transfers
The PlayStation 5 is capable of taking one additional PCIe 4.0 or faster SSD for extra game storage. While any 4.0 drive will technically work, Sony recommends drives that can deliver at least 5,500 MB/s of sequential read bandwidth for optimal performance. In our testing, PCIe 5.0 SSDs don’t bring much to the table and generally shouldn’t be used in the PS5, especially as they may require additional cooling. Check our Best PS5 SSDs article for more information.
Our testing utilizes the PS5’s internal storage test and manual read/write tests with over 192GB of data both from and to the internal storage. Throttling is prevented where possible to see how each drive operates under ideal conditions. While game load times should not deviate much from drive to drive, our results can indicate which drives may be more responsive in long-term use.
The PV593 would be a great PS5 drive, too. The problem is there are many PCIe 4.0 drives that will perform just as well and will cost you a lot less. Over time this may change as we get newer consoles and as PCIe 4.0 drives start coming up in relative cost. It might be an okay strategy to get a PCIe 5.0 drive now for plans you have down the road and parking it in the PS5 is better than in a drawer. That said, we would not recommend the PV593 if you are strictly buying an SSD for the PS5.
Transfer Rates — DiskBench
We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.
[Charts]
The PV593 scores more or less the same as the XPG Mars 980 Blade, which is exactly as expected – the two drives use the same hardware. We question why the copy performance is this bad, considering we know the flash can do better, but it’s impossible to deny that this “budget” flash choice impacts read and write performance, which, in turn, affects copying. One reason is that newer controllers are optimized for faster flash, and even relatively minor differences, say in latency, can extend to differences in areas like file transfers.
Running flash slower can have secondary benefits such as improved power efficiency or higher effective endurance and it’s possible some trade-offs were made in firmware to make a drive like this happen. From the user’s perspective this means the drive has to translate that to cost savings if you’re an educated buyer. Prebuilt machine makers and everyday builders might look at the maximum specs and call it a day, though, but we always recommend exercising caution on big purchases.
Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark
ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.
No real surprises in ATTO; the drive performs mostly as expected, with dips following what we see for the XPG Mars 980 Blade. We’ve concluded that the drop we see with 2MiB reads is a factor of the flash rather than the controller, as we also see a similar drop with the older Rocket 5.
In past reviews, when we first came across Micron’s 232-layer TLC flash – which has six planes rather than four, a characteristic also of YMTC’s 232-Layer TLC – we assumed this was a matter of alignment. In brief, we know flash uses 16KiB physical pages, and if each die can parallelize that six ways via the plane count, and we’re juggling two dies per each of eight flash channels, we’re talking about 1.5MiB of data at a time. The result is, perhaps, a drop at 2MiB without full recovery possible at 4MiB. We also see this with writes in ATTO in some cases, which does apply to the PV593. This does not necessarily translate directly to real-world performance drops for a variety of reasons. Data usually isn’t pretty or uniform, and you have more than just storage in play. For specialized applications, this might be something to keep in consideration, though.
We see some poor marks with CDM’s sequential results, too, although the only one really worth looking at is reads at QD1. This is a typical transfer workload and is one area you would expect good performance from a high-end drive. The PV593 and XPG Mars 980 Blade both fall short and lag the DRAM-less Black Opal X570. DRAM helps more with random workloads, so this gap is better explained by the flash being used. We would add that the PV593 is 4TB, which can put more strain on a drive, especially at higher speeds, but the 9100 Pro still makes a mockery of it. The PV593 does good work with queue depth and would be adequate as a secondary drive, but you can definitely get better all-around primary drives in this market segment.
Random read and write latency for the drive at QD1 – and QD1 is the most common consumer workload for 4KB, with most workloads being QD2 at worst, with a blanket maximum around QD4 – is thankfully better. The drive performs perfectly well for both, and this is in part because you aren’t hitting multiple dies with such small I/O. While Micron’s newer flash is still better here, as demonstrated with the T710, the older flash is good enough to surpass all but the newer PCIe 5.0 drives. We still think you should go with the Black SN8100 if latency is king for your intended workload, but if you just want a PCIe 5.0 upgrade with reasonable performance, then the PV593 would be better than any of the earlier E26-based drives. We have the Rocket 5 here as a bit of an exception because it can rival newer drives in sustained writes, as we’ll see in the next section.
Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery
Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, which is the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.
We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states as well as the steady state write performance.
The PV593 puts out an impressive 12.5 GB/s for over 64 seconds with an 800GB pSLC cache. This is a large cache but not the largest we’ve seen, and in technical terms it could be significantly bigger. However, it’s a good compromise between having too large a cache – this can lead to inconsistent sustained performance and higher latency in edge cases – and too small a cache. A smaller cache is usually preferable for consistency, but it depends on the user and workload. As high-end drives like the PV593 are intended to really move data, going middle-of-the-road is not a bad idea.
If we look at steady state write performance – this is the average write speed after the cache is exhausted – we see that the older Rocket 5 is still the fastest drive on record. That drive is using the same flash as the PV593 but with cache optimization it has a very fast TLC mode. The E28, which is the successor controller to the Rocket 5’s E26, has a somewhat similar cache strategy but with its BiCS8 TLC flash the baseline TLC speed is lower. What this means is, if you are buying a drive purely for sustained writes then the newer drives aren’t quite as exciting as you might expect. That includes the PV593. Your interest should be more on the power efficiency gains.
Power Consumption and Temperature
We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre stock storage. Desktops may be more performance-oriented with less support for power-saving features, so we show the worst-case.
Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption but performance-per-watt, or efficiency, is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.
For temperature recording we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature.
There is no doubt that the PV593 and other newer, high-end PCIe 5.0 drives handle power much more gracefully than the first generation. The Rocket 5 is inefficient in comparison with high power usage even at idle, albeit that is desktop idle. With proper cooling and a high-end system, the difference in power draw and heat production is relatively small, but this scales with more drives. We do think that upgrading from, say, a PCIe 3.0 drive to a newer PCIe 5.0 one can make sense if you want a sleek-running system.
In other cases, such an upgrade is unneeded. If you already have a Gen 5 drive or find a good sale on an original generation one, you can certainly make do without reaching for the very best. The PV593 falls between these options, as it’s not as performant as the very latest but should be somewhat more affordable. It’s also not too hard to cool, as we reached a maximum of 69°C during write testing, leaving about 14°C of headroom in a decently cooled system. That’s not amazing, but it’s definitely better than anything we saw out of the first generation of high-end PCIe 5.0 SSDs.
Test Bench and Testing Notes
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Graphics | Intel Iris Xe UHD Graphics 770 |
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We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.
Patriot Viper PV593 Bottom Line
The Patriot Viper PV593 looks attractive from a distance, but as you get up and close with the drive, it ends up being mediocre at best. Its performance is still high relative to most drives, and any PCIe 4.0 drive, and its power efficiency is better than the original crop of PCIe 5.0 drives.
The problem is, that’s no longer good enough. We recently reviewed the Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade, which has the same hardware, and that drive left us with a better feeling because it had some availability at bang-on pricing at the time of review. The PV593, instead, looks to be too little, too late, and too expensive at that. We suspect this could change, but there are enough drives in this exact spot – the Acer Predator GM9000 is another example – that it might be difficult for it to gain traction. This is especially true for Patriot, which doesn’t really have a flagship tradition, and even if it did, this drive isn’t that.
To break it down more simply, if you’re going for a budget high-end PCIe 5.0 SSD, you already have multiple choices, and the Viper PV593 just doesn’t stand out. If you’re spending this kind of money, you’re probably also looking at the excellent SanDisk WD Black SN8100, the Samsung 9100 Pro for 8TB goodness, the Crucial T710 with its newer Micron flash, or even the Kingston Fury Renegade G5, a well-known name with good support. We also have E28-based drives like Corsair’s MP700 Pro XT coming out, which just means even more options.
The PV593 has to compete on price, and at the moment, it’s just not doing so. Patriot is definitely capable of doing that and, in fact, is known for its inexpensive but capable drives, but that’s a double-edged sword when you’re looking at the higher end of products, especially in such a tumultuous storage market.
That leaves the Viper PV593 in an unenviable place: it has to be the least expensive option to make sense, but the amount of budget shoppers looking at this class of drives might be short in number. We suspect this drive will make more sense in regions of the world with fewer options, and it could also be a good pick for prebuilts and budget builders who need to check the high-end PCIe 5.0 SSD box. This is also true of the XPG Mars 980 Blade, but we feel the Adata drive is in a slightly better spot, given it’s already been priced effectively. We’re fully aware of the fact that Adata does not have the best reputation, but even with some enthusiast stigma, it can hold its own against Patriot. We reluctantly have to give the PV593 a weaker score, given the current market outlook, but we want to emphasize that it is not a bad drive at all. It’s just not targeting the right segment at the right time, and you will probably have better options.
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