1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Hardware Kingston SSD NOW V+ Series 128GB Review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Lizard, 17 Feb 2010.

  1. Lizard

    Lizard @ Scan R&D

    Joined:
    17 Feb 2007
    Posts:
    2,890
    Likes Received:
    37
  2. benji2412

    benji2412 <insert message here>

    Joined:
    25 Apr 2009
    Posts:
    1,037
    Likes Received:
    24
    I'll be honest, thanks to the massive price rise in SSDs I'm just not interested in them anymore. I was going to purchase one just before the price rise. Now, quite frankly I'm going to have to wait. I can't see any massive performance enhancement I'd benefit from apart from windows loading more quickly. That of course I'm not bothered about because just under 2 minutes isn't like waiting 10. Besides, a few seconds here and there off level load times and no noise? Not for that price and certainly not for the massive hit in storage. 2010 year of the SSD? It certainly could have been..........
     
  3. memeroot

    memeroot aged and experianced

    Joined:
    31 Oct 2009
    Posts:
    1,215
    Likes Received:
    19
    still to expensive I'm afraid.... will like many people wait and see...
     
  4. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

    Joined:
    13 Jan 2005
    Posts:
    1,810
    Likes Received:
    92
    I'm inclined to agree :( NAND pricing is really hurting the mass market appeal of SSDs. When the M225 launched last year it was £225 for 120G of storage - the same drive now costs £325!

    You really do see the benefits once you've used one though - faster boots, application loads, - everything just feels so much more responsive and smoother than with even a fast hard disk drive. I can see your point though - £270 is a lot to pay for the privilege.
     
  5. yakyb

    yakyb i hate the person above me

    Joined:
    10 Oct 2006
    Posts:
    2,064
    Likes Received:
    36
    I'm toying with the idea of purchasing one for some DB testing to see what improvements i get on reads compared to a standard Hdd setup but after checking the recent prices i'm going to have to wait

    is there any indication of when these prices may start to fall?
     
  6. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

    Joined:
    13 Jan 2005
    Posts:
    1,810
    Likes Received:
    92
    The new drive controllers should start to hit late march/april but the prices are very much dictated by NAND production, which remains annoyingly erratic.
     
  7. [PUNK] crompers

    [PUNK] crompers Dremedial

    Joined:
    20 May 2008
    Posts:
    2,909
    Likes Received:
    50
    I am at the point now of buying an f3 1TB having waited the best part of a year for a reasonably priced 120GB SSD. I dont even want incredible performance, just decent and within £150. It seems the market conpires against us at the moment though so i like others will be waiting for something decent to come along.

    Having said that i do appreciate the efforts of kingston to make an affordable drive, even if NAND pricing makes it pretty much impossible right now.
     
  8. Bad_cancer

    Bad_cancer Mauritius? 2nd speck east of africa

    Joined:
    7 Apr 2009
    Posts:
    708
    Likes Received:
    12
    ^ yeah when nand manufacturers stop being greedy *******s. :sigh:
     
  9. barrkel

    barrkel What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    31 Jan 2007
    Posts:
    82
    Likes Received:
    1
    The Intel drives still look unmatched from a software developer build perspective. You need high throughput, low latency random reads and writes to keep compilers and linkers busy. Moving from a 10K Raptor to an Intel X25-M (G0 though) helped reduce build times on the dev tree I work with from 13 minutes to closer to 7.5 minutes. For me, the only pages that matter are 8 and 9, and with the build process spewing out several GB of data over its several minute run, the random write speed of the X25-M is head and shoulders above the rest.
     
  10. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    After years of having record low DRAM prices, many of the companies are just now breaking even unfortunately. If we want them to stay in business to have actual competition, the prices need to stay, otherwise it could be a lot worse...

    barrkel - unfortunately your G1 won't have and will never get TRIM, so your performance will drop through the floor, even if it is faster than before :( Yay for Intel :(
     
  11. barrkel

    barrkel What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    31 Jan 2007
    Posts:
    82
    Likes Received:
    1
    Oops, I meant G1, not G0.
     
  12. Bad_cancer

    Bad_cancer Mauritius? 2nd speck east of africa

    Joined:
    7 Apr 2009
    Posts:
    708
    Likes Received:
    12
    I concede the point, but was it necessary to skyrocket the prices so much in one go?

    I suppose the argument is: "Ahhhh a financial crisis, but we have nand prices rising!!! Lets cover the losses now before its too late!!!"

    :sigh: doesn't help us much though does it?
     
  13. yakyb

    yakyb i hate the person above me

    Joined:
    10 Oct 2006
    Posts:
    2,064
    Likes Received:
    36
    whilst i agree to an extent that they should be charging what they cost to produce them + profit margin, constant improvements arise in order to produce cheaper Larger faster products.

    Tbh i would be happy with today's performance + Size but being built on tomorrows tech (therefore cheaper) how long until this starts occur is what i was asking

    is this likely to be a year, 2 years?
     
  14. MitchBomcanhao

    MitchBomcanhao What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    21 Jan 2010
    Posts:
    20
    Likes Received:
    0
    the cool thing about this article is that my crappy laptop from 2007 with a not so good hard drive pulled from an external storage product is faster booting up windows 7 home premium than the high-spec machine used for testing xD
     
  15. rickysio

    rickysio N900 | HJE900

    Joined:
    6 Jun 2009
    Posts:
    964
    Likes Received:
    5
    Don't know if it's just me, but my WDC Blue 320 GB drive boots (win 7 ultimate x64) faster than the Samsung. ;)
     
  16. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

    Joined:
    13 Jan 2005
    Posts:
    1,810
    Likes Received:
    92
    The boot times listed include the bios screens and the various SATA controllers on the motherboard - it's more for a comparison than a drag race. If we were to disable all the extra controllers and boot screens (As i've done on my home system) boot times drop accordingly. For example, on our old Vista test system we used to get boot times of sub 25 seconds with the SSDs! It's all a matter of context.
     
    Last edited: 17 Feb 2010
  17. BigM2006

    BigM2006 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    8 May 2006
    Posts:
    71
    Likes Received:
    1
    do you have a review of the crucial m225 that you talk about in the last paragraph?

    I've had a search around, but cant seem to find one?
     
  18. Phil Rhodes

    Phil Rhodes Hypernobber

    Joined:
    27 Jul 2006
    Posts:
    1,415
    Likes Received:
    10
    Quite commonly we're getting information that "drives with controllers X and Y are OK", where "OK" in context means "will not explode violently after thirty-four seconds of use".

    This is complicated enough by the tendency to buy a set of PCBs and stick your logo on it, and yet again because the people who make the controllers (which is what actually matters) are not the same people who sell the drives. Given that I can't really go into a shop and buy an SSD armed with a screwdriver and a magnifying glass, can we have a table that matches up the names under which these things are sold with which controller they use? And whether that controller offers a decent lifetime without running under windows 7 and not on a RAID?
     
  19. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

    Joined:
    13 Jan 2005
    Posts:
    1,810
    Likes Received:
    92
    We've not reviewed it on the site - it's physically identical inside to the OCZ vertex and has similar levels of support (ie faster firmware releases)
     
  20. do_it_anyway

    do_it_anyway Minimodder

    Joined:
    24 Apr 2009
    Posts:
    266
    Likes Received:
    11
    Want an SSD
    Want a bank manager who doesn't hate me.

    Frustratingly I can't apparently have both. And no SSD has (yet) proved to me that the performance benfefits outweigh the inital costs.
    Sure, they are palpably faster than a mechanical HDD, but a 30sec decrease in boot time, and some quicker game loads, don't save me enough time yet to justify the cost. Especially when playing online, cos my F3 loads quicker than other players older drives, and I just end up waiting for them to load anyway.
     
Tags: Add Tags

Share This Page