Kingston SSDNow V+ 64GB - Your thoughts

I'm considering getting a Kingston SSDNow V+ 64GB SSD (SNVP325-S2/64GB) to use as my Windows 7 boot drive with a couple games/apps (all my other games/apps and data would go on my VelociRaptor) and I was wondering what your opinions on them where..

From the reviews I've read performance is raather good for the price point (rated at 230MB/s Read / 180MB/s Write) and it has TRIM support ..

So guys.. Any input appriciated .. Cheers

From the reviews I've seen I have a generally positive view of it. While not in the same performance class as Intel, it is still way faster than hard drives. The GC also seems to be very efficient so it might be a good RAID candidate.

However there are two negatives that really stand out in my mind:

• It has a higher random access time that other SSDs (0.2 ms vs 0.1 ms). Still way faster than a hard drive but it does hurt the 4k random read and write speeds.
• It is a new controller from JMicron/Toshiba and thus is an unknown. While I don't doubt they've fixed the stutter issues who knows what other issues it has that hasn't been discovered yet?

Thanks again Mr Alpha..

I wasn't aware of the differences in controllers, I did a bit of reading but am none the wiser.. Lol .. So are there any SSDs (around the same price point) that outshine Kingston.

Cheers

I think you should be able to find a Intel x25-M for not much more than that, 80GB at that.

I've had a look around and can get a X25-M 80GB for about £180 .. I really don't like the look of its write speeds however, they seem much lower in comparison to other SSDs and I think even my VerlociRaptor beats it .. ..

A quick question on day to day usage also .. My 'User' files (My Docs, Music, Pictures, ect.) .. As I'm always adding to/deleting files from these folders, would they be better off on my raptor?

Thanks yet again Mr Alpha

While I admit the squential write speed of the Intel drive is its weakes link there are three things you need to remember.

First is that random wrote speed is more important than sequential write speed, and here the Intel excels. It is almost 70 times faster than the VelociRaptor.

While the 80MB/s sequential write of the Intel is slower than the VelociRaptors ~100MB/s average sequential write, it isn't that much slower.

The third thing is the question of how often you really produce more than 80MB of data per second that you need to save to the drive. Unless you are compressing multiple gigabytes or saving 12 megapixel photoshop images it is seldom a problem.


As for moving the user profile off the Intel drive: I wouldn't unless you are creating >300MB sized files to it on a daily basis. For file copying Intel can still be better. Even though writing to the Intel may be bit slower than to the VelociRaptor, opening the files from the Intel will be massively faster.