PNY Updates SSD Firmware To Higher Performing 5.05 LSI SandForce Release

Typically we don’t post articles on SSD firmware updates but the uproar received over PNY’s being ‘late to the game’ with their SF 5.04 firmware update was something we never expected.

This was obvious in our review of the PNY Prevail Elite SSD where we praised it’s build and performance with our Editor’s Choice Award and commended PNY for being the first consumer SSD manufacturer to use eMLC memory in efforts to increase SSD endurance.

PNY has finally released their firmware update for the Prevail and XLR8 families and we just updated our SSDs, each taking a grand total of about 10 seconds to complete and no reboot necessary.  The process couldn’t be easier as you select the drive and then choose the firmware version that you prefer.

We mention choosing the firmware version you want as PNY has included both versions 5.04 and 5.05 for you to update.  Previously, many had spoken of the 5.05 firmware being restricted to manufacturers and maybe even providing a performance boost so we thought we might check it out for ourselves.

Our two Anvil Storage Utility charts below identify that testing had been done with F/W 5.04 and 5.05 and, it seems that we get a higher total score from 5.04.  Take a look for yourself!

HIGHLY COMPRESSIBLE DATA TESTING

Where we need to understand the reasoning behind the professed performance boost comes from high sequential read and write performance, as well as the high IOPS score, all of which are definitely better.  When you couple this with lower 4K-QD4 read and lower 4K write results however, we can see where the Total score drops.

For those who might be considering that this may work on other brands of LSI SandForce Driven SSDs, we are one step ahead and tried with negative results. Other brands cannot use this firmware.  For those that love incompressible results…

INCOMPRESSIBLE DATA TESTING

The PNY SSD firmware zip file can be found here.

About the Author

Les Tokar is a technology nut and Founder of The SSD Review. His early work includes the first consumer SSD review along with MS Vista, Win 7 and SSD Optimization Guides. Les is fortunate to, not only evaluate and provide opinion on consumer and enterprise solid state storage but also, travel the world in search of new technologies and great friendships. Google+