14 DAY TRIAL // We are long past the point where we feel surprise at another SSD line using SandForce controllers, so Patriot Memory's Wildfire Pro and Wildfire SE lines didn't catch us off guard.
The actual controller used is the SandForce SF-2281, which lets storage devices make full use of the SATA III interface.
To avoid confusion, SATA III is the same thing as the SATA 6.0 Gbps standard, while SATA II is SATA 3.0 Gbps.
The Wildfire SE line is composed of 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB members, all of which boast ECC protection, TRIM support and an MTBF of over 1.5 million hours.
The DuraClass and DuraWrite technologies probably have something to do with that endurance. TRIM support is implemented as well, naturally.
Meanwhile, the Wildfire Pro line has 100 GB and 200 GB members, plus much the same specs as above.
"This launch of our second generation Wildfire Pro and Wildfire SE brings enhanced overprovisioning, wear leveling and speed to the brand family," said William Lai, Patriot Memory's product manager.
"Future looking, Patriot Memory will continue innovation to deliver true enthusiast performance for demanding professional applications."
Solid state drive series are known to vary in read and write performance depending on the capacity of their members. Thus, units with more gigabytes work faster than their smaller siblings.
The situation is surely the same here, so even if the top rates are of 500 MB/s read and 550 MB/s write, the 100 GB and 120 GB ones probably won't manage that much.
Nevertheless, the numbers are still beyond those enabled by competing controllers and much, much higher than what the SATA II connection allows.
Now we'll just wait and see what other controllers SandForce comes up with. The second generation was completed last year, so the company is surely devising new ones. Then again, there is little point in a third generation when the SATA interface has yet to move past 6.0 Gbps, so whatever the company is planning will take a while to leak to the web.