Kingston SSD Now V Series 128 GB Review

HDTune 4.50

HD Tune is a hard disk utility which has the following functions:

• Benchmark: measures the raw performance
  • Transfer Rate
  • Access Time
  • CPU Usage
  • Burst Rate
  • Random Access test
  • Write benchmark
• Hard Disk information which includes partition information, supported features, firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode
• Hard Disk Health
  • S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
  • Power On Time
• Error scan
• Temperature display

Kingston – Left, Patriot – Right

• Read Test

Both the drives are pretty equally placed in this test.

• Write Test

Here is where things go awry for the Kingston SSD. The write speed seems to be all over the place, even dipping to as low as 25 MB/s. In the end the Kingston SSD is only delivers an average speed of 100 MB/s compared to the Patriot SSD’s 151 MB/s.

• Random Read Test

Things do not get any better for Kingston here. It is still off the pace of the Patriot SSD.

• Random Write Test

The Kingston SSD redeems itself here big time. This test solidifies the need to test with more than one benchmark. Although the Kingston SSD lost by quite a bit in 512KB random write testing in CrystalDiskMark earlier, here it shows some stellar performance with 1 MB blocks and random blocks. The average access time and the average transfer speed for the random test is magnificent when compared to the Patriot SSD.

Although the Kingston SSD wins this round, the difference in write speeds across various blocks may be attributed to the following problem. The benchmark below tests the cache of the SSD. Here we are testing the write speeds of the 64MB cache for the JMicron controller onboard the Kingston SSD. Notice how the write speeds suffer terribly between the 12-18 MB mark. This loss in speed in the cache is what is causing very low write speeds when writing to the flash memory on the drive.

Now notice the write benchmark for the cache on the Patriot SSD.

Notice it is practically the same across the whole of the cache.