A Gamer’s perspective of Kingston’s 128 GB SSDNow V100 series – revisited
This is not going to be the usual Solid-State Drive (SSD) review touting the theoretical advantages of the SSD over the mechanical Hard Drive (HDD). This has been done over-and-over in many reviews and a particularly excellent evaluation was done by our own MrK on the earlier version of the same SSD that we are evaluating today – Kingston’s improved 128GB SSDNow V100 SSD.
The SSDNow V100 is a 100% Kingston-branded solid-state drive using the same JMicron 618 controller as the previous SSDNow V Series drive. The new V100 uses Toshiba’s new 32nm NAND, therefore it has received a firmware upgrade plus performance enhancements in order to be optimized for the 32nm die shrink. However, instead of concentrating on the technical, we are going to be looking at the advantages that a PC gamer might have using a SSD over a fast mechanical hard drive.
Of course, we shall briefly rerun some of Karan’s synthetic and real world testing to see if we can see the performance improvements that Kingston promised over the older version, last year. To properly bring you this review, we purchased two Seagate 500GB 7200.12 HDDs from Buy.com for $40 each, shipped; $80 total costs for 1TB of total storage in two separate mechanical HDDs! Compare this to our 128GB Kingston SSDNow v100 which retails for $234.99 and we would have to say, the SSD had better be much faster.
We have also noticed that pricing on SSDs have been dropping and currently this same SSD has been on sale at NewEgg this week for $194.99 and there is a further $75 mail in rebate which brings the price down to $119 which is finally below the $1-per-gigabyte storage costs that have long been considered breakthrough low-pricing.
Evaluating the Kingston SSD from a gamer’s perspective means finding the practical advantages of the SSD over the HDD, including more than three months of daily using it. Because a Solid-State Drive’s performance tends to degrade over time, many reviews are carried out with the SSD in a completely brand new state each time every single benchmark test is run. That means the SSD is erased after each test is run. How fair is that? We made sure to start out with all of our drives brand new, and then we used our drives in normal day-to-day usage and tested them against each other for the benchmarks that you will see. Read on as we share our three-month journey into the practical advantages of the SSD over the HDD from a gamer’s perspective.
The SSDNow V100 is targeted as an upgrade path for mainstream consumers including gamers as a cost-effective performance upgrade option in upgrading a desktop or notebook. The older KingstonNow V-series 128GB SSD that MrK reviewed last year had a good price to performance ratio. With an updated controller and 32nm NAND, read and write performance has markedly increased from the previous-generation Kingston SSDNow V Series SSD. The older drive was capable of up to 200MB/sec. read; 160MB/sec. write whereas the new one can manage up to 250MB/sec. read; 230MB/sec. write; a solid improvement for the same list price
Kingston has also introduced a 256GB capacity SSD with the SSDNow V100, giving consumers a higher-capacity option at a good price point. There are two kits available. The SSDNow V100 is available with the bundle upgrade kit which includes cloning software along with a 2.5″ hard drive enclosure (notebook bundle only); or 3.5″ brackets and SATA and power cables (desktop bundle only). We are evaluating the desktop bundle in this review.
A firmware upgrade with the older SSDNow V Series such as our MrK evaluated last year, is not possible due to a process shrink. MrK’s older V Series uses 43nm NAND and our new V100 SSDNow uses 32nm NAND Flash. Any attempt to upgrade the firmware of the older drive with the new would probably end in disaster and a useless drive. However, the older drive is very fast and it also supports TRIM and garbage collection found in the newer series which will keep your SSD running near its optimal performance over its long lifetime.
Pictured below is the Kingston SSDNow V100 (front center) with four mechanical drives – two 250 GB 7200 RPM drives of Seagate’s tenth generation and two brand new 500 GB drives of their latest, the 12th generation. Notice how much thinner the newer drive’s cases (left) are compared with the drives (right) from two years ago. The new Seagate Barracuda HDDs are quieter and faster than their mechanical hard drives of just two years ago although the rotation speed remains at 7200 rpm. Mechanical HDDs have become much cheaper and a 1TB drive may now be purchased for about the same costs as a 250GB drive just two years ago! How does a Solid-State Drive stack up in terms of price/performance to these mechanical drives in a practical way for gamers? The answer is forthcoming!
Here are the specifications from Kingston’s own web site that covers the entire Kingston SSDNow V100 series.
Specifications
Kingston SSDNow V100 Features & Specifications:
- · Innovative: 2.5″ form factor; uses NAND Flash memory components
- · Interface: SATA 1.5Gb/sec. & 3.0Gb/sec.
- · Capacities*: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
- · Sequential Speed**: up to 250MB/sec. read; up to 230MB/sec for 128GB & 256GB, up to 145MB.sec. for 64GB write
- · PCMark Vantage HDD Suite Score†
64GB – 19,932
128GB – 20,571
256GB – 19,910
- Silent: runs silent and cool with no moving parts
- Reliable: less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
- Shock-Resistant: no moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions
- Supports S.M.A.R.T.: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
- · Supports TRIM***: ensures maximum performance on compatible operating systems
- Power Specs: Active 6.4W (TYP) / Sleep 1.0W (TYP)
- Storage Temperatures: -40° C to 85° C
- Operating Temperatures: 0° C to 70° C
- · Weight: 114.76g (stand-alone unit); 302.91g (notebook bundle); 328.40g (desktop bundle)
- · Vibration Operating: 2.17G (7-800Hz)
- · Vibration Non-operating: 20G (10-2000Hz)
- · Life Expectancy: 1 million hours MTBF
- · Warranty/Support: Three-year warrant with 24/7 support
* Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual available capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston’s Flash Memory Guide at kingston.com/flash_memory_guide.
**Speed may vary due to host and device configuration.
*** Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2
† Test system: Intel DG45ID Desktop Motherboard; Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU @ 2.83GHz; System Memory 4GB; On-Board SATA 3Gbps with AHCI-Enabled Window 7 64-bit.
| Kingston SSDNow V100 Solid-State Drives | ||
| Part Number | Capacity and Features | Street Pricing (U.S. only) |
| (Newegg.com; Buy.com) | ||
| SV100S2/64GB | 64GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (stand-alone drive) | $ 119.99 |
| SV100S2D/64GB | 64GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (desktop bundle) | $ 129.99 |
| SV100S2N/64GB | 64GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (notebook bundle) | $ 129.99 |
| SV100S2/128GB | 128GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (stand-alone drive) | $ 224.99 |
| SV100S2D/128GB | 128GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (desktop bundle) | $ 234.99 |
| SV100S2N/128GB | 128GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (notebook bundle) | $ 234.99 |
| SV100S2/256GB | 256GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (stand-alone drive) | $ 489.99 |
| SV100S2D/256GB | 256GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (desktop bundle) | $ 499.99 |
| SV100S2N/256GB | 256GB 2.5“ SATA SSD (notebook bundle) | $ 499.99 |
Differences between Notebook and Desktop bundle
Since Kingston sent ABT the desktop SSD kit, we are evaluating it from the standpoint of loading Windows 7 onto it plus applications, and benchmarking it versus the hard drive with the identical setup. Now Kingston includes the brackets and SATA and power cables for the end user along with the cloning software so we also have the option of making the SSD the C drive and putting the bulk of the data on a mechanical storage drive. In this scenario, the SSD becomes a boot drive for the PC and it is an option that can work well.
Setting up a SSD and a HDD together is beyond the scope of this article, but you will be able to access anything on the SSD lightning-fast to take advantage of your favorite applications and games and still use the mechanical drive seamlessly, just as it would be without the SSD as boot drive. Not all SSDs have great read and write times, so not every program will benefit from being on a SSD, but all will benefit from the lightning-fast response from the seek times that a SSD enjoys over the HDD.
The difference with the notebook upgrade is that if had we gone down that route, Kingston would have sent us the notebook bundle. What we would have got instead is a 2.5″ enclosure, the SSDNow V100 and cloning software. In that case, we would have installed the SSD into my notebook, plugged the old 5400 rpm HDD into the enclosure, popped in the disc and cloned the HDD onto the SSD. When finished, the old notebook HDD now becomes an external hard drive to give more storage. Or one can remove the notebook’s optical drive and use the SSD together with the old HDD.
Let’s open the box.
I was actually impressed with the performance in most everything but the games dont look nearly as impressive as say the windows start up time. The numbers are there and for gaming SSD should be low on the list of priority; A luxury that should only be considered last, if there is money left for it, after all other components are bought.
Considering the size of modern PC games, I would consider a large drive very important. 128GB would hold only a hand full of games and even less with the OS on it. I would recommend 500gb minimum for a PC gamer and thats the lowest. With the SSD the higher capacity drives are insanity expensive, 500gb drives cost nearly $1200. So a single SSD of 128gb isnt practical for the modern PC gamer and the only way it makes since is a system that has more than one drive. The SSD along with a large mechanical HDD would be the best route for a gamer that really wanted to enjoy the technology. With the OS and the most used programs on the SSD and use the other larger drive for storage.
I can see plenty of advantages in SSD. Its lightning fast for sure. I can see the potential and will go out on a limb to say the SSD will eventually replace mechanical HDDs all together. But for now, for the average PC gamer, I just dont see it as worth the price at all, especially not a system running purely SSD. If you have extra cash to blow and you just want the best of the best tech, a hybrid system with a small SSD and a large mechanical drive will give you all the speed of an SSD without any sacrifice of capacity. There are some nice 60gb SSDs for a just at 100$ and it would serve well for a hybrid system with a small investment. Enough for your OS and for your most used programs at blasting SSD speeds. You can easily move the data to storage when its not being used as much to keep the SSD with the most used programs and keep the fast. This is the best use i can imagine for a PC Gamer and the SSD.
Your conclusions are very close to mine. I got ten games on a 128GB SSD and it eventually ended up with 5 games and a lot of programs. I really never play more than about 4 or 5 games at one time although I benchmark nearly 30 games. This SSD may not be practical for my desktop but it definitely has a future in my notebook! After all, I do everything *but* game and edit video on my dual-core Athlon Compaq notebook.
However, your pricing is way off. This same $235 SSD has been on Buy.com and NewEgg.com for about $125 after a mail-in-rebate. So pricing has come way down and that $125 doesn’t buy such a great upgrade any longer.
Setting up the SDD to work seamlessly with the HDD is not difficult and the size of the SSD that you choose should reflect how many programs you want to be really fast and on the SSD itself. Windows 7 takes up a nice chunk of drive real estate and a 128GB drive becomes “full” with about 119GB of data.
If you just want a fast start-up and shutdown and maybe a few apps, then even a 30GB SSD might be sufficient.
I am just reporting that the state of the SSD art is up a level and that pricing is down. If you are looking to speed up your PC, it might be a good upgrade for a gamer.
I still wouldn’t touch an SSD. You can get a fast 2 TB HD that in most practical cases will be just a bit slower while costing far less and offering much more capacity.
Also SSD technology is still unproven in terms of reliability. I have a 13 GB HD from 2000 that still goes the last time I tried it.
As long as both technologies keep improving at the same rate, mechanical will continue to be far ahead of solid.
I felt *exactly* like you do before I got one.
– and I stand by my conclusion. It is unnecessary for a gamer; it’s just “nice” to have one in a gaming PC.
However, this SSD has a permanent home in my notebook. 5400 rpm notebook HDDs suck and 128GB is a good size for me.
I do not think I have ever seen an SSD review that good.
In fact, I did not know that an SSD review could be that good!
Hey BFG10K, at least an upgrade to SSD would show you so many more “felt” benefits than upgrading from say, 6GB to 12GB memory, or even from 4GB to 8GB. If I had to choose, I’d rather spend that $$ on a good SSD like this one here.
thats what i feel. I think the ssd technology is extremely stable thus far and a smaller drive does make since, lots more since than 12 gb of ram!!!! Also apoppin, are you saying my pricing was off on the 500gb SSDs? The cheapest 500gb SSD that i seen on new egg is $1179, if you know of some cheaper ones do let me know, i am looking at getting one for a new OS installation.
I’m sorry, I may have misunderstood you, Ocre. When you mentioned 60GB SSDs for $100, I thought that was rather expensive since this 128GB drive is only $125 after M-i-R.
Two 128GB SSDs can be set up in RAID to make the equivalent of a single 256GB capacity solid-state drive. That might just work for a gamer for a reasonable price.
no apologies please, i was hoping there were some deals i was overlooking. the SSD pricing isnt what you would expect after 160gb. I think two 125gb is much cheaper than one 250gb. then the 500gb ssd is unbelievably high. Was kinda hoping that there was some cheaper ones i didnt know about, but they will eventually come down, that i am sure.
This is the right blog for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You realize so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want…HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!