Boot Times:

This is pretty simply really, how long does the system take to get to your main screen (auto login on Ubuntu and Windows 7) and launch its first application fully (I used OpenOffice.org Writer for this scenario).

Now those charts are down right revealing, either using Linux or Windows your time to boot up and launch a single application is ½ with the Patriot Warp V.2 SSD compared to the spinning Seagate hard drive.

Left 4 Dead:

OK, now for some truly real world applications; I am timing how long it takes from the main menu in Left 4 Dead to the point in which you are in the first person of your character (single player mode to take net interference out of the scenario).

Ouch, that is a serious time difference, I mean, if you are fighting for the 4^th spot,wouldn't it be nice to know you can launch into the game that much faster? This for me is a real world win!!! 

Look and Feel:

This can be very subjective, some people are much more sensitive to pauses and delays then others. Gamers, however, are a pretty defined bunch when it comes to system performance. I have little tolerance for a system that causes my game to pause or stutter, especially when I am in the middle of a high action sequence. To this end I delayed the publishing of this article over one week while I used it as my main drive.

MyOS (win 7 Build 7057), my Virtual Drive, my games and all of my Apps were installed on the Patriot Warp V.2 drive. Prior to starting this phase of testing I performed a few tweaks on the drive as follows:

UltraDMA Mode 5

WriteCaching Enabled

Disabledthe Indexing Service

DisabledAutomatic Defragmentation

I can say that the time went by with barely a hitch, I launched applications (I wrote most of this review on the Patriot Warp V.2SSD) including a little movie editing and playback, browsed the Internet with both IE and FF, played a few L4d and Quake 3 games, chatted on IRC/IM while letting Avast scan everything on the way in and out. The only thing I didn't have running during this test was Thunderbird, its just to much a PITA to move it over :).  I had neir a hint of a stutter or bottleneck. The only issue I had was a single lock up in L4D, where I had to reboot the system. The lockup can be attributed to many scenarios, of which the Patriot Warp V.2 is a possibility, however, the rest of the system, not to mention the OS (which of course, is still in beta) are also high probabilities in the lock up. I did start to see the "slowdown" Anand mentioned in his article start to crop up here and there, well, either that or over time my expectation of snappy increased as I used the system more and more, granted installing a few OS's and allowing my SSD to be the Swap Drive isn't your day today scenario and surely accelerated the full SSD issue. Hopefully, Diskeeper or the like, will introduce a program soon enough that will tune your SSD for optimum performance at all times, therefore alleviating this issue all together.

Unpluggingthe Patriot Warp V.2 and putting the spinning drives back in (yes, I run 2Seagate 320's in RAID 0 as my main drive on a day to day basis) is when I noticed lag and delays. While I understand the points made by many readers in many forums across the net, I must say that after using the Patriot Warp V.2 in my system for over a week and running several tests on it, I have yet to see a drawback to using this SSD as my main drive. It must also be noted that the intention of this review, as well as the assumption to the purpose of the people reading this, is that of replacing their spinning Hard Drive with an SSD variant. In this decision matrix, cost is going to be a huge deal breaker for a lot of readers (including me), Patriot, with it's V.2, is going to fit into their upgrade plans very well. I will, however, keep this review “open” as it relates to stuttering or lags as I will be replacing my drives with the Patriot Warp V.2 SSD full time. If anything shows up, I will be sure to update that information here.

FinalWords

With SSD drives making the mainstream push, has positioned itself well. They have a good reputation behind them as well as a house hold name when it comes to memory devices. While an SSD is a memory device, many of the consumers out there are much more accustom to seeing Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor et all as the dominating names when it comes time to purchase a Hard Drive. Patriot is in a new division, whether the device is or isn't, technically. The Warp V.2 performs day to day operations faster then your typical spinning hard drive. While the write speed is not up to pa rwith spinning drives on larger files, this reviewer feels that the overall experience points to the Warp V.2 SSD as a cost effective, highly noticable upgrade to your good old standby spinning hard drive.

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