As with our last SSD evaluation, 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).  Instead, our evaluation is going to focus on Kingston’s improved 96GB SSDNow V+100 SSD. Our follow up review of the 128GB (not “+”) SSDNow V100 Series was itself a follow-up of MrK’s evaluation performed last year on the SSDNow V (not “100“) Series.  Over a year ago, he concluded that Kingston was making performance progress with their SSD lineup and now we have the 96GB plus (“+”) series to review as our third ABT article evaluating Kingston SSDs.

We also toured the Kingston Fountain Valley California headquarters factory this Spring and we watched RAM modules and flash drives being made.

The 96GB SSDNow V+100 is a 100% Kingston-branded solid-state drive using the same JMicron 618 controller as the previous 128GB SSDNow V Series drive that we evaluated a few months ago. The new V+100 uses Toshiba’s 32nm NAND as the V100 series, therefore it has also 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.

During our Kingston Factory tour, we heard about a large corporation that needed the exact right size SSD for their employees notebooks and found that 60GB was just too small and 128GB was too large.  They found that their employees tended to store their own personal videos and pictures on larger-storage capacity SSDs on company notebooks. So they came to Kingston with a special request and found that 96GB was ideal for their employees. Since 96GB is a great size, Kingston has made them generally available to regular users including this editor.

Our evaluations of SSDs vs HDDs are ongoing as we expect to shortly do a complete notebook “makeover” as we dump our slow 5400 rpm HDD for a speedy Kingston Vnow series SSD and upgrade our system memory from 2GB to 4GB and our OS from Vista 32 to Vista 64.

Of course, we shall briefly rerun many of MrK’s synthetic and real world testing as well as our own, to see if we can notice the performance improvements that Kingston promised over the older version last year as well as using the benches from our latest 128GB Kingston SSDNow V100 SSD review. To properly bring you this review, we used the same two Seagate 500GB 7200.12 HDDs that we purchased from Buy.com for $40 each earlier this year.  We payed $80 total costs for 1TB of total storage in two separate mechanical HDDs! Compare this to our 96GB Kingston SSDNow v100 which now retails for $199.99 and we would still have to say, the SSD had better be much faster.

We have also noticed that SSD pricing has been slowly dropping and currently this same 96GB SSD was on sale at NewEgg last week for $154.99.  There is a current $50 mail in rebate which brings the price down to $104 which is very near the $1-per-gigabyte storage costs that have long been considered breakthrough low-pricing. It will probably be at least a couple of years before SSDs are regularly at this price point.

From past testing, we concluded that a SSD certainly did make our PC noticeably much faster – especially for loading and shutting down Windows and for launching applications.  We also concluded that if you are a gamer, you can still be served well by a fast mechanical hard disk drive if storage and expense is an issue. Evaluating the Kingston SSD from a gamer’s perspective means finding the practical advantages of the SSD over the HDD, and we have had more than three months of daily comparing SSD performance with our mechanical drives.

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 secure-erased after each test is run. To be fair, we made sure to start out with our SSD 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 continued three-month journey into the further practical advantages of the SSD over the HDD from a gamer’s perspective.

The SSDNow V+100 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. And now we have a 96GB newer “+” series to evaluate which shows itself to be slower in some areas and faster in others; overall, it is expected to give better user satisfaction.

The “+” Series

Kingston has also introduced a 256GB capacity SSD with the SSDNow V+100, giving consumers a higher-capacity option at a good price point. There are two kits available for our 96GB version: Stand-alone and Bundle. The 96GB SSDNow V+100 is available with the bundle upgrade kit which includes cloning software along with a 2.5″ hard drive enclosure (in this bundle which we are evaluating now and was not included in the 128GB SSDNow V100 desktop kit) and 3.5″ brackets and SATA and power cables.

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. It is also important to check for updates as our 128GB Kingston SSDNow V100 has had a firmware update which is critical to install.

Important: If you have the same 128GB SSD (including other SSDs in the SSDnow V100 series) that we evaluated a few months ago, you will need to upgrade the firmware from Kingston’s site to insure proper running of your drive.  As always, back up your drives before doing this update.

Pictured below is the 96GB Kingston SSDNow V+100’s competition – four mechanical drives – two 250 GB 7200 RPM drives of Seagate’s tenth generation and two newer 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 just two years ago. The new Seagate Barracuda HDDs are quieter and faster than the older series although the rotation speed remains the same at 7200 rpm. Mechanical HDDs have become much cheaper and a 2TB 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?

Here are the specifications from Kingston’s own web site that covers the entire Kingston SSDNow V+100 series.

Specifications

DataSheet

SSDNow V+100 are ideal for demanding corporate environments and for system builders and integrators. It uses a standard SATA interface but unlike a regular hard drive, it’s built with no moving parts. It provides durability and reliability to meet the needs of professionals in the office or on the road. Business travellers in any industry will appreciate its performance gains, as will medical professionals, software developers, video editors, designers, IT workers and law enforcement officials.

SSDNow V+100 feature an independent garbage collection function that maintains a system at optimum performance level. This is especially important for systems running on Windows XP, which doesn’t feature TRIM, and it will also help organizations extend the software cycle on their systems, delaying upgrades of operating systems and compatible applications.

SSDNow is backed by a three-year warranty, live 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston® reliability.

Features

• Innovative — uses MLC NAND flash memory components.
• Silent — runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
• Shock-Proof — no moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions
• Supports TRIM¹ — Ensures maximum performance on compatible operating systems
• Supports S.M.A.R.T functions
• Garbage collection feature — ensures maximum performance on Operating Systems not supporting TRIM
• Guaranteed — three-year warranty, live 24/7 tech support

Specifications

• Form factor — 2.5″
• Interface — SATA 1.5Gb/s and 3.0Gb/s
• Capacities ² — 64 GB, 96 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB
• Dimensions — 69.85 x 100 x 9.5 mm
• Weight — 128 – 151 grams
• Storage temperatures — -40 ~ 85°C
• Operating temperatures — 0 ~ 70°C
• Vibration operating — 2.7G
• Vibration non-operating — 20G
• Sequential Read Throughput ³ — 230 MB/s
• Sequential Write Throughput ³ — 180 MB/s
• PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score ⁴ —
  64 GB – 35,04696 GB – 34,971 

  128 GB – 35,073

  256 GB – 34,795

  512 GB – 34,697

• Power specs — Active – 3.4W (TYP) Idle – 0.05W
• MTBF — 1,000,000 Hrs

Kingston SSDNow V+100 Part Numbers:

SVP100S2/64G (stand-alone drive)SVP100S2/96G (stand-alone drive) 

SVP100S2/128G (stand-alone drive)

SVP100S2/256G (stand-alone drive)

SVP100S2/512G (stand-alone drive)

SVP100S2B/64GR (upgrade bundle kit)

SVP100S2B/96GR(upgrade bundle kit)

SVP100S2B/128GR (upgrade bundle kit)

SVP100S2B/256GR (upgrade bundle kit)

SVP100S2B/512GR (upgrade bundle kit)

Differences between the bundle and stand alone units

The V+now Series bundle is a bit different than the Vnow Series bundle; last time Kingston sent ABT the 128GB SSDNow V100 desktop kit which was bundled a bit differently then the 128GB SSDNow V100 notebook kit, and now we are evaluating the V+100 “upgrade” kit (as now differentiated from the V+100 “Stand alone” drive).

To perform this evaluation, we load Windows 7 onto our HDD plus applications, and benchmark it versus our solid state drives with the same (cloned) identical setup.

With the V+Series, 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 one scenario, the SSD becomes a boot drive for the PC and it is an option that can work well. If we have a notebook HDD (or another SSD), we can use it as storage inside the USB 2.0 case that Kingston provides in the upgrade kit. So you basically get both the notebook kit and the desktop kit in one great bundle. The only reason we can think of getting the stand alone drive, is if you already have a upgrade kit and don’t need the hardware or software included in a duplicate bundle.

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.

If you choose to do a notebook upgrade – as we will do in our upcoming notebook “makeover” article – we will use the 2.5″ enclosure and the SSDNow V+100 and cloning software. In that case, we would install the SSD into the notebook, plug the old 5400 rpm HDD into the supplied USB 2.0 enclosure, pop in the disc and clone the HDD onto the SSD. When finished, the old notebook HDD will now become 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 inside of the notebook. If you choose to do a desktop upgrade, you can use the SATA cable and the rails instead from the same ‘+’ kit.

Let’s open the box.

Contents

Here is the retail box that you would buy with the desktop upgrade kit. As you can see the contents are well-packed for transport safely to your door. Inside the box, the precious contents are well-protected by the plastic shell. The SSD is rather tough anyway and Kingston even had a contest to show how durable they are.

Kingston calls the SSDNow v+100, “the Ultimate Upgrade!” We shall see. We also note the 24/7 promised tech service and the 3-year warranty are right on the box as well as the advantages of the product as this SSD will also be featured in retail brick and mortar stores as well as online.

Here are the contents; the 2.5″ SSD, the 3.5″ brackets and screws, the SATA data cable, the SATA power cable, the case and the cloning software CD and the installation manual.

Here is the SSD’s other side and we see the standard connections.

As you can see the physical look and dimensions of both SSDs are the same.

As you can see, our SSD has the standard SATA power and data connectors.  Below is Thermaltake’s BlackXduet USB and eSATA hard drive dock which proved very useful in reading data from internal drives that are now accessed as external drives. Look for the review published by Leon Hyman.

We set up Windows 7 64-bit on one of our Seagate 500GB 7200.12 Barracuda hard drives along with six fairly new games, favorite applications and benching tools. We put about 89GB or so of data on our HDD so that we would not have any issues cloning the HDD to the SSD.  We made sure to leave room for additional files and applications to its maximum of about 80GB after the OS install. We used the supplied Acronis cloning software on the Kingston-supplied CD to make a exact copy of our HDD and we were able to then boot from either drive. The cloning software is very fast and very easy to use. However, before we get to the benching, let’s recap the SSD and what makes it unique from mechanical drives.

One mistake many enthusiasts make is to think of a SSD like a mechanical HDD. Instead, think of it as a giant flash drive with the strengths and weaknesses inherent to that kind of storage. MrK’s article on the previous series of Kingston SSDNow is extraordinarily well-written and detailed, and it would be good to review it if you are not familar with Solid-State storage. Also, here is his article on the faster but much more expensive Patriot TorqX 236 GB SSD which goes into even more detail. MrK explains the strengths and weaknesses of the SSD. Instead of repeating his information, this section will be the briefiest of recaps and we will focus instead on secure erase and performance degradation.

Because of the way data is written to and erased from a SSD, the write speeds will go down as more and more data is written to it. There is a definite need for TRIM and other garbage collection. When Windows 7 identifies the drive as a SSD, it enables the TRIM command for the drive when files are deleted from it. The TRIM command tells the SSD controller to delete the pages on the NAND flash block when the user deletes the data. The entire block containing the data is copied into the memory cache and then the block is erased. After this procedure, the data without the user-deleted part is rewritten back to the block from the memory cache. This results in longer delete times, but allows the write performance to remain nearly like-new.

Secure Erase and Performance Degradation

A secure erase restores your drive to a like-new state where each cell is effectively zeroed out. So its performance would be like-new also as if it was fresh out of the box. Simply cloning over from an HDD to SSD would not zero out the cells like a secure erase would. This is because you’re not guaranteed to be writing over the same cells. In a clone, information is just being transferred over, not like erasing a cell first and then writing to it. On a good SSD such as Kingston’s SSDNow v100 series, there is simply no need to secure erase periodically, but whenever you format or re-image your drive, it’s a great idea.

This is perhaps the most detailed yet simplified step-by-step way to secure erase your SSD – something you must do (for safety) if you ever sell it:

http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/8/13_Erasing_an_SSD.html

Be aware that your SSD’s BIOS may have some sort of mechanism that prevents the secure erase tool from detecting the SSD for secure erase. We had no such issues with our Kingston drive but we wish that they had included a secure erase tool with the drive.

Note on testing.

We began our testing with our SSD in a brand-new state as delivered by Kingston. We also began with two brand-new identical Seagate 500GB HDDs which are the 12th generation of their 7200 rpm desktop series. We installed Windows 7 64-bit operating system and a bit less than 80 GB of programs, applications and games. Next, we used the Acronis Cloning software included on the included Kingston CD to effortlessly copy in just a few minutes the entire hard drive image to the Kingston SSD which now became a bootable drive. For certain write tests, all of the data had to be erased on the SSD and we also ran these same tests on a formatted HDD with no operating system installed. Generally, all of our testing was done with the SSD in a used condition and the drive was not erased (as many benchers do) before each bench that is run or after a single day of normal day-to-day use.

Although we have evaluation copies of some of the SW we tested, we used the freeware or shareware version if there was a choice. There are some remarkable tools available for testing hard disk and solid-state drive performance and all of the ones that we used are considered excellent.

About Kingston Digital, Inc.

Kingston Digital, Inc. (“KDI”) is the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Established in 2008, KDI is headquartered in Fountain Valley, California, USA. For more information, please visit www.kingston.com.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-920 reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.2 GHz); Turbo is off.
• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
• 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 1800 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
• Kingston 96GB SSDNow V+100 Solid -state drive (supplied by Kingston)
• Kingston 128GB SSDNow V100 Solid-state drive (supplied by Kingston)
• GeForce GTX 580, 1.5 GB reference design and clocks (772/2004 MHz), supplied by Nvidia
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Two identical 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
• Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce WHQL 266.58; High Quality (as in our last SSD evaluation)
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• DirectX July/November 2010
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• vsync is forced off in the control panel.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games and all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis/Warhead.
• All results show average frame rates except as noted.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The Benchmarks

Tests

• CrystalDiskMark 3.0
• HDTach 3.0.4
• ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34
• AS SSD Benchmark
• HDTune 2.55
• PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Just Cause 2
• Resident Evil 5

• Dirt 2
• Metro 2033
• F1 2010

Synthetic Tests

CrystalDiskMark

Crystal DiskMark version 3.0 is an excellent way to test your motherboard/HD’s performance. CrystalDiskMark is primarily a HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to measure sequential data and random read/write speeds in 4k blocks and 512k blocks.

Here are two key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

· Sequential reads/writes

· Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes

First we test with our 500GB Seagate 7200.12 mechanical hard drive and we see very decent performance.

Now we move on to the 128GB SSD for some amazingly fast performance! We don’t see any improvement whatsoever over MrK’s Read speeds in the older V series (ours is tested on a used/filled drive), but there is substantial improvement in the Write speeds – the place where the older SSD was weak.

And now we test with our 96GB SSD:

Both SSDs leaves the HDD far behind in this benchmark. The 96GB SSD is slightly slower in this test in the write speeds but are generally faster than the 128GB version in the read speeds.  And all of the important performance figures are solidly up over the older series and generally over MrK’s tests.

HD TACH

HD Tach v3.0.4.0 is a hard drive benchmark utility which will measure the average read speed, the random access time, and the CPU utilization.

First we look the HDD’s sequential read speed test is graphed along with the random access time and CPU utilization – average read is 110.5 MB/s, which we shall see is less than half that of the SSD: at the sequential read speed of the 128 GB SSD is graphed along with the random access time and CPU utilization – average read is 223.5 MB/s.

Even in a used state, the 128 GB SSD scores impressive numbers over the HDD in every synthetic test so far. And now we test the 96GB SSD:

The 96GB SSD is again a little slower in the read speeds than the 128GB version but it also scores a bit higher in the average read than the older series and with less CPU utilization than what MrK measured.

HD Tune 2.55

HD Tune is a hard disk utility. We are using the default setting of 64KB blocks for testing. First we run the standard benchmark with the 500GB Seagate HDD .

Now we run the benchmark for the 128GB SSD; the minimum speeds are down from the 128GB version.

 

Again the newer “+” series SSD is generally faster; access time is spectacular compared to the mechanical drive and CPU usage is at a minimum – even compared to the 128GB version at 1.6%.

There is absolutely no comparison in these synthetic tests. Both SSDs are much faster than the mechanical HDD and the new Kingston SSDNow V100 and “+” series is faster than the older series that MrK evaluated last year.

ASSD

ASSD is designed primarily for Solid-State Drives. There are four synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD and are carried out without use of the operating system caches. In Seq-test the program measures how long it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. In the 4K test the read and write performance for random 4K blocks is determined. The 4K-64-thrd test corresponds to the 4K procedure except that the read and write operations on 64 threads are distributed as with the usual start of a program.

In the copying test following folders are created: ISO (two large files), programs (typical program folder with many small files) and games (folder of a game with small and large files). These three folders are copied with a simple copy command of the operating system. The cache is turned on for this test. The practice tests show the performance of the SSD with simultaneous read and write operations.

And now it is the 128GB SSD’s turn.

And now it is our 96GB’s turn:

 

As in most of our test, the SSD leaves the HDD far behind in the benchmarks.  However, in the sequential test, the 128GB version is faster – although we see that in the other tests significant improvement has been made where it was weak before – sacrificing strengths that make little practical difference to the average user.

Performance Degradation

Many reviewers will test a SSD only when it is brand new – and that means erasing the SSD before every single test! Well, we wanted to show you what the performance degradation was like with a nearly-new SSD (above) – when we began testing – compared with that of a more “used” SSD (below) that was tested at the end of the benchmarking run a few days later Needless to say, this editor broke with protocol and tested the SSD in a used state – so the numbers you see are more indicative of “real world” performance.

As we tested in our last 128GB SSD review, the performance decline is subtle and it is something you are not likely to notice even weeks or months later – especially since this Kingston SSD supports TRIM and “garbage collecting”.  These important functions keep your SSD running close to like-new performance. You have to realize that the mechanical HDDs that we are using also started out brand-new and they are also subject to performance degradation as the files become fragmented.  However, even after months of use, there is little noticeable or even measurable change.

ATTO

The ATTO Disk Benchmark is an aging performance measurement tool which measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize the performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.  Here are the results of the HDD benchmark.

And now we show the ATTO Disk benchmark results for our 128GB SSD:

Finally the same benchmark in the same PC and identical conditions with the 96GB SSD.

It doesn’t really prove anything, but synthetic benchmarks are definitely faster on the SSD vs the HDD.  We also note the continuing trend of performance differences between the two SSDs.  In some areas, one is faster than the other, but we want to know practically if one is faster.  Perhaps PCMark Vantage may provide a clue.

PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista and 7 that offers one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. A PCMark Vantage score is a rough measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks. The measurement for the PCMark Vantage hard drive suite is the total score with the scoring for each test further broken down. There are a total of eight hard drive tests within PCMark Vantage and all eight are run to measure the relative performance of the SSD vs the HDD we tested.

The HDD Test suite in PCMark Vantage consists of the following 8 tests:

• HDD 1- Windows Defender
• HDD 2- Game HDD
• HDD 3- Importing pictures
• HDD 4- Windows Vista start-up
• HDD 5- Video editing
• HDD 6- Media Center
• HDD 7- Adding music to Windows Media Player
• HDD 8- Application loading

First we run the standard PCMark Vantage benchmark suite using our Seagate 500GB 7200.12 hard drive.

Now we run the same benchmark suite with our Kingston SSDNow V100.

Finally we run the same benchmark suite with our 96GB Kingston SSDNow V100.

In all cases, the SSDs are faster with PCMark Vantage than with the mechanical hard disk drives and the 128GB drive is faster for some applications than the 96GB version; there is a performance tradeoff.

SANDRA 2010 SP1

SANDRA, short for the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant is an information and diagnostic utility. It provides a tremendous amount of information about every hardware and software component in your PC. It also provides various benchmarks including for measuring and reporting disk performance. SANDRA 2011 Service Pack 1 is already out and although we used the Lite version which is free for evaluation, the complete version is currently 60% off the regular $49.99 – only $19.99 – for an incredibly useful suite which we also use regularly as a diagnostic utility.

First we run the drive comparison for our Seagate 500GB HDD:

Now we test with the Kingston SSDNow v100 and watch our performance skyrocket.

And now with the 96GB version.

As usual, both SSDs are significantly faster that the HDD for synthetic benchmarking; again in some tests the 96GB version is faster than the 128GB version. Let’s head for real world testing.

Real World Testing

CustomPC Benchmark

CustomPC benchmark use widely available open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC’s performance. These tests themselves are not synthetic benchmarks but instead they use real world image, video and multi-tasking tasks to test the performance of your computer. We are looking to see if tasks are faster on the SSD than the HDD.

The tests are:

• GIMP Image Editing
• H.264 Video Encoding
• Multi-tasking

As usual we test with the Seagate 500GB HDD first.

Now the same test is repeated on the SSD.

No difference in image editing speed. Let’s copy a video file, first on the HDD.

Let’s copy a video file on the SSD.

Video encoding has completed about 6 seconds faster on the SSD – 329 seconds on the HDD and 323 on the SSD. Not a lot of difference, so let’s check out our final test, multi-tasking.

Now on to Multi-tasking with the SSD test.

Now let’s do the all in one test with the 96GB version.

Both SSDs are one to three seconds faster than the HDD and there is really only slight variation overall. Now we will go to a very practical test of something we all do, file copying.

File Copy: Crysis Warhead

In this test we are using MrK’s method of installing the Crysis Warhead game to the drive being benchmarked. Then that game folder is copied to another folder on the same drive using Microsoft’s Robocopy GUI and the time taken is noted. This real world benchmark tests both the read and the write speeds of the drive at the same time. MrK and I both choose Crysis Warhead for this purpose as this game has a lot of files of various sizes. This should test the hard disk transfer speeds across vast sizes of files and is indeed a real world scenario.

The game was patched with the 1.1 and 1.1 hotfix patch which introduces the 64-bit executable. The test is performed 3 times and the results averaged. The HDD took 2 minutes and 47 seconds on average to copy 5.63GB.

The 128GB SDD took 1 minutes and 51 seconds on average to copy 5.83GB. The 96GB SSD only took 1 minute and 18 seconds!!

Now we test the 96GB SSD on the same file copy – note the speed is higher in the GUI than the 128GB version.

Need we say more? The 96GB SSD was even quicker at 1 minute and 18 seconds than the 128GB SSD which already saves nearly one minute over the mechanical drive; nearly three minutes for the HDD to copy the same files that the SSD does in way less than half the time!

We have already seen very slight improvements in video editing and multi-tasking when the drives are accessed and huge gains in copying big files, but will it also translate to improved performance in gaming? We will look at gaming load times now that we are finished with the synthetic and real world benchmarks.

Gaming Load times

Solid-state drives won’t increase game framerates but they can certainly reduce game startup times and save/load times. This means less time waiting for the game to load and more time playing the game. There is also the issue of “immersion”.   If it takes a long time to load a level or an autosave, it may cause irritation, and getting back quickly into the game after your character dies is important for staying immersed in any game.

For the games that follow, we load autosaves and also complete levels to compare the speed of the SSD vs the HDD. The first test (slow) represents the average of the initial loading times – the first time you load a level or an autosave; and the second test (fast) represents the subsequent load-time average (which is generally quicker).

In the following chart we test all of our games at 2560×1600 with fully maxed-out details and with AA/AF enabled (except for Metro 2033 which has DOF, AA and PhysX disabled).   All of these games are tested by measuring the time it takes to launch their respective benchmarks.

For Far Cry 2, we compared the time it takes to load the Short Ranch benchmark as it is similar to loading a level. We did a similar thing for the other games by comparing the loading times of their benchmarks (using the first load times versus the subsequent loading time).

For our next chart we load an autosave (usually when you die and until you restart) on the HDD and compare how long it takes for the same autosave to load on both SSDs.  This time there is an average of the slower load times (usually the first time you die) with the faster load times (subsequent loads).  We load the very last checkpoint in Metro 2033 within the last level of the game and compare the time it takes for the SSD versus loading from the HDD and see that it is quite a bit slower for the mechanical drive.

If you are into saving time, the SSD is definitely faster in loading PC levels and autosaves. The SSD will not improve your framerates – or your aim – but it may improve immersion by getting you back into the game a bit more quickly.  And we also note that the 96GB SSD is a fraction quicker than the 128GB SSD.

Windows Startup and Shutdown

Now we come to what is arguably one of the most frustrating part of Windows – waiting for it to start-up or shutdown. For some of us, it is not important as we rarely start-up or shutdown our PCs. For others, it is a painful process to watch – while others of us do something else while our programs start-up or shut down. Let’s first look at the average shutdown time which includes our average “fast” shutdown time as well as our average “slow” shutdown time for each drive (it represents an “average range” for the test PC) , as there are so many variables when you shutdown your PC (installing updates will prolong the process). Basically you are saving a couple of seconds, on average with a SSD over a HDD.

It looks like the 96GB SSD is faster overall.  As we are often want to do, we reversed shutdown with start-up because we wanted to save the very best graph for last. We tested averages from the moment Windows 7 start-up begins to the moment that our last program – Steam – sets up.

How do you value your time? The charts speak for themselves again. On average, Windows sets up from two to over three times faster on a SSD than on a mechanical hard drive. We also see that the 96GB SSD is noticeably faster than the 128GB version we tested; corporate users and power users will love this feature as no one wants to go make a cup of coffee while Windows sets up (we hope).   Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

As our MrK concluded last year and we also concluded in our evaluation of the 128GB version a few months ago, SSD technology is one of the most rapidly improving. With more and more motherboard manufacturers offering SATA 3 6Gb/s ports, the ceiling for maximum transfer speeds for disk drives has been nearly doubled from the SATA 2 3Gb/s standard. We have seen the SSD develop improved new controllers that bring faster speeds – especially to read speeds and now balanced out in this newer Kingston “+” drive.

We have watched SSD technology also get slowly cheaper over time and it is much more accessible to the regular consumer and not just for enthusiasts.  We expect it will still take at least a couple of years to reach the break-through $1-per-gigabyte pricing regularly.  For this to happen, it will take mass consumer and OEM acceptance and there is still huge room for growth in this regard. For now, the Kingston SSDNow V+100 series offers a good bang-for-buck at regular pricing and we have noted that it was on sale last week (at the time of writing this evaluation) at NewEgg and at Buy.com  with its mail-in-rebate rebate bringing its final costs down close to the now amazing $1-per-gigabyte value.

The 96GB Kingston SSDNow V+100 series SSD offers good performance for an affordable price and it is a solid improvement over last year’s older V series. Last year’s SSDNow V (not 100 nor “+” series) drive showed some weird performance characteristics. When it was compared to the much more expensive and faster overall, Patriot TorqX M28 256GB SSD, the Kingston SSD would sometimes lose on random write tests and win on others, depending on the size of the block of data being transferred. We have seen great improvements in this area and the “plus” drive still retains the great characteristics which make it incredibly faster than a mechanical hard drive while offering a lot more for the regular or corporate user.

It is absolutely not “mandatory” to have a SSD if you use your PC only for gaming. A hardcore gamer would more likely save his money by buying a large fast mechanical drive and upgrading his graphics instead. Mechanical HDDs have got quite fast for gaming and their only disadvantage compared to the SSD is waiting a second or two longer for your autosave to load; or even longer for an entire level to load. However, if a gamer is impatient and wants to get right back into the game, then the SSD will definitely improve immersion and decrease frustration.  It is a matter of valuing ones time compared to what one spends on a relatively small-capacity drive; one has to choose their games and applications to put on the SSD wisely – Less than 80GB after the OS installation is not a lot of space and you can only have a few modern games on your SSD at any one time.  Most SSD gamers will constantly be installing new games and uninstalling them after playing them to make room for even newer games.

I still would liked to see Kingston offer a secure erase tool for SSDs – or at least instructions; in every other respect, it is a well-rounded SSD bundle with a superb balance of performance to price. Since the PC that this editor uses for benching has well over 450GB of just games installed, it is not practical to use a 96GB SSD for benching. Neither is it practical to use it as a boot drive because we use two 500GB HDDs – one for Nvidia drivers and one for AMD drivers – and we have returned to using our Seagate HDDs for all activities. We really miss the responsiveness and quick-loading of the SSD and especially the quick-loading of Windows and game levels.

As our next SSD project, we are going to be using our older Kingston SSDNow V100 128GB solid-state drive for a complete notebook “makeover”. We feel that our 2.0 GHz mobile dual-core Athlon X2 is still a capable platform with a 8200M mobile GeForce and it is mostly held back by it’s slow HD and only 2GB of RAM running on Vista 32.  We will easily replace the 250GB 5400 rpm drive that is pre-installed with the 128GB Kingston SSD and double the RAM capacity to 4GB. As we will then have more system RAM than a 32-bit OS can address, we will take our free upgrade to 64-bit Vista.  Since we do ninety percent of our work on our notebook, we expect a world of difference in every way and we will soon have a “Part three” to our ongoing SSD vs. HDD evaluations. Stayed tuned to ABT!

Pros –

• The SSD is of a magnitude faster generally than the mechanical hard drive in almost every way. Windows startup is blazing fast and shutdown is noticeably quicker!
• Kingston’s SSDNow V100 96GB drive has improved in every way over the previous 100 series and it is faster in many practical ways over the 128GB version.
• Kingston’s 96GB SSD offers great performance for its regular price and it has been recently been found on sale for nearly $1 a GB after mail-in rebate.
• TRIM support and garbage collection keeps your drive “like new”.
• Excellent bundle for notebook or desktop in a single package makes setting up your SSD a breeze and less complex than choosing the bundle for the 128GB (non +) series.
• 3-year warranty and 24/7 Kingston support stand it out from the “SSD crowd”

Cons –

• Price per GB is very high compared to mechanical hard drives.
• Limited storage compared to HDDs
• 96GB is too small for a hardcore gamer; 128GB makes a difference!

The 96GB Kingston SSDNow V+100 still deserves the ABT Editor’s Choice award. Although it is not especially a drive for gamers because of low-capacity, there is plenty of room for Windows, applications and perhaps 5 or 6 of your favorite games.  It is also highly recommended as a time and frustration saver in starting up and shutting down Windows.

We did not set out especially to evaluate our 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drives. However, they continue to performe admirably and demonstrate improvements in every way over the 7200.10 drives that we have been depending on for over two and one-half years. If we were giving Seagate an award, they would deserve our “Great Value” award!  We even filled our drives to capacity as we tested over 70 games for our upcoming 3D Vision evaluation, and they still perform as they did months ago when they were less than half-filled!

We also want to give a big congratulations to the winners of our Freedom Contest on July 4th!  Look on our ABT forum for the announcement of the grand prize winner of this same 96GB SSDnow V+ series that we just evaluated; the Kingston prizes are brand new from Kingston, and you can also congratulate the runner up who just won a 32GB Kingston Flash drive.

It pays in every way to keep up with ABT and the best way is to follow us on our ABT forum.  You can be part of great discussions; learn about everything tech-related including breaking news and “inside” information and perhaps contribute and even win prizes in our giveaways.  Our muvee give-away of Reveal 8 is ongoing and it is SO EASY to enter and win a free retail key valued at $80 for the easiest to use video-sharing software that is available anywhere – there really is no learning curve!

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

 

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«1. Introduction 2. Package Contents 3. Test System & Benchmarks4. Synthetic Benchmarks 5. Real World Tests 6. Game loading & Windows Startup 7. Conclusion8. View All»