Kingston V series

D

darkhunter139

Supreme [H]ardness
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I was just reading this article and the new 40 gig Kingston V drive that is coming out seems like a relatively cheap way to get an SSD for my desktop. The write speeds are not that great but the read speed looks pretty good.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1111/1/

Do you think one of these drives will be worth it or will it perform at lot worse then say the Intel G2 or the better OCZ drives?
 
Just read that article and they look a lot slower. I am going to keep waiting it out I want something good to drop down into the 150-200 range.
 
I have one of the other v-series in my laptop. Performs decent enough for the price and end use of the laptop its in.
 
Thinking about ordering one of these tonight (OCZ Agility), think it would be a wise move or should I wait?
 
If it's something you want, and you can get it for $140 I'd go for it. The Agility is a solid drive.

You could always wait for better/faster/cheaper, so it depends on how much you want an SSD. I'm not aware of any great new drives coming out soon that would cause prices on current drives to drastically drop, and there are no rumors of upcoming OCZ price drops that I'm aware of...so if you want it, get it. :) There will eventually be significantly better drives available, but in the meantime you'll be enjoying your SSD rather than waiting for something on the horizon. Might as well get your feet wet now with a good deal on a good drive! Many people regard going from HDD --> SSD as the single greatest upgrade that they've ever done. For $140 it's worth finding out...there are many more expensive upgrades that would not give you as large of an increase in performance as an SSD.
 
darkhunter139 said:
How come the Kingston V series is higher up then the OCZ agility on this performance test?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=7
Click to expand...

It doesn't beat it in every test, but it is faster in some. Many people feel that there isn't a lot of real world difference between the Agility and Vertex, and the Vertex and X25-M. Since the Kingston V series falls somewhere in between, it follows that you're probably not going to notice a lot of difference. How much capacity do you need? How much do you want to pay? Choose a drive based on that criteria, or keep waiting...it's ultimately up to you.
 
I was thinking about picking up one of those agility drives then getting another later on and running them in raid 0 but i think im going to keep waiting for another month or two and look for a really great deal.
 
Looking at that review done at LegitReviews, one would think "Hey, for ~$85, this Kingston 40GB is cheap, and it's insanely fast for read speeds, but weak in terms of writes, which is fine by me" and would that really be a bad thing?

Hell, I've been holding off for some time now, and while 40GB is a wee bit on the low side, I'm seriously considering grabbing one of these because my primary system partition for Windows 7 is never larger than 50GB anyway (after a month on the same installation it's currently at ~27GB but that's because there's 9GB of downloaded content that hasn't been moved to backup/optical storage yet).

Yeah, for ~$85, that's going to be the drive in my laptop soon. 40GB ain't a lot, but with 4 USB ports on this HP 6510b, and 3 external drives here at home (3.5") as well as 2 2.5" USB powered drives (a 320GB and a 500GB), 40GB is more than enough.

Considering the current 7200 rpm in my laptop gives average read speeds of about 70MB/s (Hitachi 320GB), 3x that speed isn't anything to cry about considering the price. ~225MB/s should breathe new life into this workhorse lappy... :D
 
Would this kinston 40Gb out perform my 36GB raptor? Also what if you raid 2 Kinston 40Gb drives would it outperform the intel 80GB?
 
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Outperform the original Raptor? Definitely for reads (both sequential speed and random access, of course), but 2 in RAID 0 will be fast only for reads, just as the Intel SSD hardware is. It's that write performance that kills it, so... the Raptor and the Intel SSD would beat it there. But those benchmarks at LegitReviews did show the drive exceeded the published claims by quite a bit so that's promising.

Still, for the cost and the read speed (which is what matters to most people I guess) it's a great price, just limited in terms of capacity. I'm definitely getting one, I already committed to it but I can't find 'em anywhere, not at Fry's, not at Newegg, etc so I guess I'll be patient.

For an OS drive this actually is a good idea: the actual OS files themselves will take a large percentage of the drive, but they are static files that rarely if ever change. Sure, you can updates for the OS, new drivers, that sort of thing, but the primary files that make up the OS itself rarely change, which makes this perfect for a system drive. They stay put as they don't need to be continuously defragged because they're moving all over the place, etc. There's a lot involved with ensuring that a drive is good for an OS drive and this one definitely works in that respect.

Set this one as the OS drive, get a real hard drive added in (if you can) or potentially use a RAMdisk for all TEMP/TMP file activity and wham, you just increased your system performance rather dramatically because you're offloading the necessity to use the SSD for the small random writes which hurt performance.

My intention is to get one, set it up with Windows 7 on it (without needing to tweak it at all, Windows 7 is ready for SSD hardware), get a RAMdisk set up with about 384-512MB of RAM (my laptop has 4GB) and use that primarily for TEMP/TMP files, the Internet browser caches, perhaps run Firefox directly off the RAMdisk itself (which I do most of the time anyway, saves a lot of hassles and it's wicked fast), as well as some other stuff that will create a damned fast laptop with a cheap low cost high speed (read speed, at least) SSD.

Can't beat that... ;)
 
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sub.genius said:
Outperform the original Raptor? Definitely for reads (both sequential speed and random access, of course), but 2 in RAID 0 will be fast only for reads, just as the Intel SSD hardware is. It's that write performance that kills it, so... the Raptor and the Intel SSD would beat it there. But those benchmarks at LegitReviews did show the drive exceeded the published claims by quite a bit so that's promising.

Still, for the cost and the read speed (which is what matters to most people I guess) it's a great price, just limited in terms of capacity. I'm definitely getting one, I already committed to it but I can't find 'em anywhere, not at Fry's, not at Newegg, etc so I guess I'll be patient.
Click to expand...

what about for gaming,video editing etc.... also what about durability?

would this be a good deal here in Canada.

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=39759&vpn=SNV125-S2BD/64GB&manufacture=Kingston
 
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Durability isn't an issue: if you had that drive you'd have to write data to it and fill it, then erase it, and refill it millions of times before you'd start having issues. SSD hardware is more durable than that nowadays. This isn't a 1st generation SSD device from 2-3 years ago, this is current, it can handle the usage without issues.

It's being marketed as a system/boot/OS drive, that's what it should be used for I say. A small/er/ish partition for the system/boot/OS drive where the OS sits and works from, and use additional storage for the big time activity stuff where data is read/written to constantly and with better performance.

If I had a desktop at this point I'd get one of these, put Windows 7 on it, set up a second hard drive (I have a WD 640GB Black also) for the good stuff, the read/write stuff, the normal usage and files activity, while the 40GB Kingston SSD remains wicked evil cool fast because it's got the OS on it - and as I just stated above, the core OS files rarely ever change, they are static, they don't move all over the place. They're written to that drive when you install the OS and they rarely if ever need to be altered or moved so you lessen the need to erase data anywhere near as much as non-system/non-OS files get accessed.

I'd end up with a ridiculously fast system - with a RAMdisk for those TEMP/TMP files too... it's fairly easy to do this stuff and get a huge boost in performance even if you have a damned fast SSD already in place. Adding a RAMdisk for TEMP/TMP/Internet cache stuff will dramatically improve system performance, it really does.

(yes, I know a lot about RAMdisks...) :D

I don't know if that 64GB model you linked to is the same core tech that makes up the 40GB reviewed in the OP's link, but, it says V Series on it so I guess it is. If it is, then it becomes a question of the price, I'm not familiar with exchange rates, etc so I can't say. I'd pay $150 for a 64GB version of the V Series if it matches the performance shown in that LegitReviews review, definitely.

I don't use my system/OS drive for anything but the OS and applications as installed - if they have data folders, etc, that stuff is mapped out to other drives either on my network of 3 machines or to one of the USB external drives I have in place. I keep my system/OS drive clean of unnecessary data so it remains fast as hell...
 
Thanks Sub I think I will wait until Black Friday or after Christmas sales and see if I can get one even cheaper.
 
Bleh, just re-read that entire LegitReview again and am even more convinced this is a must-have drive for me considering the cost and performance overall, but I'm miffed at something they say in the review which is wholly inaccurate:

LegitReviews Kingston 40GB V Series review Page 13 - Capacity and Windows 7 said:
Just for fun we installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and found that the base install without any updates or utilities installed was 17.5 GB. This means that less than half the drive is being used, which is very nice and Windows 7 leaves a much smaller installation foot print than one might think.
Click to expand...

The way they put it makes it sound like installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64 will suck down half the space on the drive by default, and of course this is false - here's why.

If you look at page 4 of that review where they lay out the "Test System" they used, one thing becomes readily apparent: it's got 6GB of RAM in it. After a default installation of Windows 7, you'll have a page file on the hard drive and a hibernation file (pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys, respectively, both hidden system files in the root of the system partition). The page file doesn't get sized to 1.5x physical RAM anymore - Microsoft finally altered that formula to limit it to about 1.5GB max regardless of how much physical RAM you have. I'm not sure about the exact percentage it chooses, however. On this machine I'm sitting on with 2GB of physical RAM in it, the page file by default after a clean installation is 768MB, not the 3.5GB it would be if they were still using the old formula of 1.5x physical RAM.

So, where's the beef in that so-called 17.5GB they claimed? In the hibernation file, of course - that's always the size of the physical RAM in a machine so, with 6GB of RAM in it, they've got a 6GB hiberfil.sys sitting on the SSD right after the installation.

Sucks that they'd actually be so careless not to point this out but, that's a given I suppose. For most people, if they choose to use an SSD, hibernation would not be a good idea on a desktop PC, but on a laptop it's still an option - the preferred method would be using Sleep/Standby, always, because that doesn't require any hits to the hard drive for storing data, it's all kept in RAM when the machine switches to low power states.

Having said that, I did a fresh clean installation of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on this very machine a few days ago to create an image for testing purposes. This machine consists of:

Core 2 Quad Q8400 at stock 2.66 GHz speed
2GB of DDR2 667 at stock timings of 5-5-5-12
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2H mobo
Western Digital 1TB "Green" 5400 rpm hard drive SATA II
LG Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive
Onboard audio
EVGA 9500GT 1GB video card
etc etc

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 clean, then hit Windows Update and grabbed everything except those language packs, then rebooted and hit it again till it said there were absolutely no updates available. At that point I checked Device Manager - all clear, which meant that ACPI was in action and hibernation ability would kick in. I opened Explorer, right-clicked on the C: drive where Windows 7 has just been installed and it showed 10.76GB of space used (on a 50GB system partition). That's 10.76GB total space, including the 768MB pagefile.sys file and the 2GB hiberfil.sys file also - subtract those and you end up with ~8GB as the total size of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 after the installation and fully updated too.

So I really find it despicable when websites throw around info like "Windows 7 (or Vista) takes about 20GB of space to install" which is absolutely untrue.

Barely 8GB for Ultimate, fully updated, which leaves plenty of space for all the apps I regularly use on a daily basis and room for more too.

Bleh... great review and then they pooched it with that crap comment, I swear. BLEH. ;)

psst
Fired off an email to the reviewer, maybe he'll update the review with the info I just typed out, maybe not. Would be a good idea if he did, however...
 
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hehe The author of that review updated it:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1111/13/

He added the following:

** Update: One sharp eyed reader sent in an e-mail calling us out for not pointing out in this section that our test system has 6GB of memory and as a result the our page file size is fairly large as it is based off the amount of installed memory. Microsoft has actually slimmed down the page file size to match the system RAM with the release of Windows 7. Previously, Microsoft allocated “Memory + 300 MB” for the page file, but now it will only grow beyond RAM size if required. So, if you have less memory installed then you will obviously have more space available on your primary drive.
Click to expand...

So I emailed him again saying he forgot to mention the hibernation file which is another 6GB of "wasted" space bringing the actual install size down to literally just slightly larger than 1/3 of the original 17.5GB they measured.

Nice to see him respond so fast, and even at this time of day but I guess it's early in the east (I'm in Vegas, Pacific time, 4:34AM as I type this). Let's see if he updates it again...
 
Yeah if these drives are available for 85 bucks at launch, I'll grab one just for my windows boot drive, windows day to to day doesn't need all that much bandwidth by itself, the intel's cache and low latency will rock though. I've been holding off on a "performance" ssd for windows/games/apps since I want to get a SATA 3 beastie, but that seems like it's gonna be 2010 at the earliest.
 
Around $84.99 after rebates is what I'm reading. As noted at the very very end of that review, these are simply Intel Gen 2 SSD devices with half the storage and half the control channels, so... the "po man's Intel speed demon" one could say. If you read the benchmarks on these in that review, it's really damned fast, and I mean really fast in most of the stuff that matters - but yes that slow write speed will cripple it in some respects.

Personally, I've been living with an older Maxtor 250GB SATA I 7200 rpm 16MB drive for about the past 2 years (aside from a short period of time when I had two 80GB VelociRaptors in RAID 0, those were damned fast too), so I'm used to fairly average write speeds like this:

diskmark.png


It's my primary drive in my Hackintosh at the moment so, it might be a tiny bit faster than that considering Crystal DiskMark was running on top of MacDrive to be able to read the HFS+ partition and do the benchmark but but but... it's still "slow" compared to something like this:

kingston40gbcrystal.jpg


I mean really, for ~$85, look at that compared to my old drive. Windows 7 would be blindingly fast on one of those, hence my intentions to get at least one for my laptop where I know it'll make a huge difference, and then I'll see what happens on the desktop later on. The write speeds on that Kingston are consistent in that 40-50MB/s range which is just damned fine with me for using it as a system/OS drive; it's those insane read speeds that truly make the thing shine.

For the cost, these will disappear the day they're available, that's the downside. Not sure if I'll be able to order one the minute they actually go on sale at Newegg but I'm damned sure going to try.

Here's something that just strikes me as odd: the author of that article emailed back, said he wasn't even sure how to adjust/edit/disable the hibernation file in Windows 7 and asked me for instructions. How the hell can someone be the Editor-in-Chief of a technology/computer hardware review site and not know these sorts of things? Ugh... I'll never figure it out. :eek: :rolleyes:

Annnnnnnnnnnd... if Kingston ponies up some TRIM... errr... firmware a few weeks or months after these hit the market, that's just icing on the cake...
 
It's a shame that they kept the V series name for the 40GB Intel-based drives considering that the other V series drives are using JMicron controllers.
 
I guess that's why they chose to add the "Boot" drive moniker onto the name to differentiate 'em...
 
If they are available for 85 on launch I might just get one of these babies for now then either add another in another one if I like it since that would only be $170 for 80 gigs. If not I will wait and get a better 80 gig drive.
 
I am also confused about a few different Kingston models, I am hoping if some1 can explain the difference:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139030

1) Kingston SNV225-S2/64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC

this drive is $185, and it's 220 Mb/s READ, 140 Mb/s Write



2) Kingston SSDNow M Series SNM225-S2/80GB 2.5" 80GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139072

Choice No. 2 is $245, same size, READ=250Mb/s, Write = 70 MB/sec

So read is just a little bit faster, Write is 1/2 of the speed of No. 1, and I pay more $$ for this? Why?



3) SSDNow V+ SNV225-S2/128GB 2.5" 128GB

For $349, and it's 220 Mb/s READ, 170 Mb/s Write

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139031

I like this one. But it doesn't say how many chnl. // architecture there are. I went to kingston site, they won't say:

http://www.kingston.com/ssd/vplus-series.asp?id=8



4) And just for comparison, Corsair has the same size drive, 128GB, but it's 220 mb/s Read, 180 MB/s Write for around the same price of $369. But it doesn't say how many chnl. there are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233087

On the bad side, it claims 100+ Year Life Expectancy (MTBF) and yet it only gives Two year warranty

Any1 owns No. 3 or No. 4 and what's your take on it?
 
Off the top of my head, I think the Kingston M 80GB is a rebranded Intel SSD, the V series except for the new 40GB one are based on the crap JMicron controller (supposedly modified to reduce stuttering), and the V+ is based on a Samsung controller.
 
SockMan! said:
Off the top of my head, I think the Kingston M 80GB is a rebranded Intel SSD, the V series except for the new 40GB one are based on the crap JMicron controller (supposedly modified to reduce stuttering), and the V+ is based on a Samsung controller.
Click to expand...

Yup, the regular V series are all jmicron based but supposedly toshiba worked with them and tweaked the controller. I have a 128 gig and it works fine for a laptop drive, never have noticed it stutter. Personally, I think the Samsung V+'s are the best bang for the buck Kingston drives. The M series is still the G1 Intel drives as far as I know.
 
HardLiner said:
Would this kinston 40Gb out perform my 36GB raptor? Also what if you raid 2 Kinston 40Gb drives would it outperform the intel 80GB?
Click to expand...
the WD360GD? most definitely, that hard drive is extremely outdated
any modern notebook drive would be faster

as for 2 Kingston in RAID vs 1 Intel 80GB, they would be about equal, but the RAID array would have faster sequential read speeds
 
Happy Hopping said:
I am also confused about a few different Kingston models, I am hoping if some1 can explain the difference:

[...]

On the bad side, it claims 100+ Year Life Expectancy (MTBF) and yet it only gives Two year warranty

Any1 owns No. 3 or No. 4 and what's your take on it?
Click to expand...

It is unfortunate but the rated speeds are untrustworthy, and irrelevant anyways. The community has done enough research that you can base your buying decision almost entirely on the drive's embedded controller.
 
ND40oz said:
Yup, the regular V series are all jmicron based but supposedly toshiba worked with them and tweaked the controller. I have a 128 gig and it works fine for a laptop drive, never have noticed it stutter. Personally, I think the Samsung V+'s are the best bang for the buck Kingston drives. The M series is still the G1 Intel drives as far as I know.
Click to expand...

is your V series SLC or MLC?
 
The drive reviewed in the OP's post:

LegitReviews said:
This fairly simple product stack starts to get a little confusing as Kingston announced this morning a new 40GB 'boot' drive in the SSDNow V series that features the second generation Intel controller with 34nm MLC NAND!
Click to expand...

So yeah, it's confusing to a point, but this new SSDNow V Series drive, specifically the 40GB "Boot" model coming out in about 9 more days, does have the Intel controller chip in it. As stated, it's an Intel G2 SSD with half the storage (40GB) and half the control channels (5 instead of 10) which is why it's got a solid ~40MB/s for writes in all the benchmarks done. It's rated for ~170MB/s reads but it's obvious based on their testing it does quite a bit more: around ~225MB/s average reads across all their benches combined.

For ~$85, I definitely plan on getting one as soon as it's available and in stock, no doubt.

Just to make it clear: this "new" Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB "Boot" drive is powered by an Intel controller with 34nm Flash modules - it's an Intel G2 SSD device with half the storage and half the control channels, but it's still better than anything else in it's price range, by far.
 
sub.genius said:
The drive reviewed in the OP's post:



So yeah, it's confusing to a point, but this new SSDNow V Series drive, specifically the 40GB "Boot" model coming out in about 9 more days, does have the Intel controller chip in it. As stated, it's an Intel G2 SSD with half the storage (40GB) and half the control channels (5 instead of 10) which is why it's got a solid ~40MB/s for writes in all the benchmarks done. It's rated for ~170MB/s reads but it's obvious based on their testing it does quite a bit more: around ~225MB/s average reads across all their benches combined.

For ~$85, I definitely plan on getting one as soon as it's available and in stock, no doubt.

Just to make it clear: this "new" Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB "Boot" drive is powered by an Intel controller with 34nm Flash modules - it's an Intel G2 SSD device with half the storage and half the control channels, but it's still better than anything else in it's price range, by far.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what we've been discussing this whole time. It's an entirely new addition to the Kingston line as the article points out.

Kingston SSDNow E Series
- (Intel Controller, 50nm Intel SLC NAND, 16MB Cache)
Kingston SSDNow M Series
- (Intel Controller, 50nm Intel MLC NAND, 16MB Cache)
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series
- (Samsung Controller, Samsung MLC NAND, 128MB Cache)
Kingston SSDNow V Series
- (JMicron Controller, Toshiba MLC NAND, No Cache)

This product stack is fairly simple to understand and each series within the SSDNow family differs by their internals, so you know what you are buying. This fairly simple product stack starts to get a little confusing as Kingston announced this morning a new 40GB 'boot' drive in the SSDNow V series that features the second generation Intel controller with 34nm MLC NAND! As many of you might be aware this is the latest and greatest SSD from Intel and is considered by us and many other reviewers as being the best SSD on the market today. In fact, the Intel 34nm G2 SSD series is the only SSD that has ever earned the Legit Reviews Editor's Choice award out of the nearly two dozen drives that we have tried out over the past couple of years.
Click to expand...
 
So now I'm thinkin'...

"Ok, one in the laptop for a nice boost in performance... then perhaps 2x40GB for a nice system drive for a desktop... yah, yah, that'll work..."

2x40GB would outperform a single full price Intel G2 80GB for read performance, definitely, and roughly match it for writes so, this could prove to be a nice thing overall.
 
These are suppose to go on sale on the 9th correct? Still cant find them on newegg or anywhere else.
 
In view of the scary issues of another brand called Corsair, for those who own the Series V or V+, I have the following questions:

1) Does the drive disappear from the BIOS days or weeks later?

2) Can the drive co-exist in 1 desktop w/ other SATA or Ultra SCSI hard drive?

3) Can the Kingston's SSD multi-task?

4) Can you upgrade its firmware on your own (If needed) instead of sending it to the manufacturer to do the upgrade?
 
Happy Hopping said:
In view of the scary issues of another brand called Corsair, for those who own the Series V or V+, I have the following questions:

1) Does the drive disappear from the BIOS days or weeks later?

2) Can the drive co-exist in 1 desktop w/ other SATA or Ultra SCSI hard drive?

3) Can the Kingston's SSD multi-task?

4) Can you upgrade its firmware on your own (If needed) instead of sending it to the manufacturer to do the upgrade?
Click to expand...
Yes.
No.
No.
No.

Also, the Kingston SSD got my cat pregnant.

C'mon guy.
 
Happy Hopping said:
In view of the scary issues of another brand called Corsair, for those who own the Series V or V+, I have the following questions:

1) Does the drive disappear from the BIOS days or weeks later?

2) Can the drive co-exist in 1 desktop w/ other SATA or Ultra SCSI hard drive?

3) Can the Kingston's SSD multi-task?

4) Can you upgrade its firmware on your own (If needed) instead of sending it to the manufacturer to do the upgrade?
Click to expand...

Well, I'll assume your talking about the Corsair P series. None of the Samsung based drives can have their firmware upgraded by the end user, not sure if that will ever change.

Obviously the new V series 40 gig boot drive will have user upgradeable firmware since it's an Intel drive.
 
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