Kingston SSDnow v200 256GB and Macbook

[PyroTechnica]

I have an older white Macbook with a 500gb 5400rpm drive in it, and I'm trying to breathe some life into it. I figured throwing an SSD was the best way to improve performance.

I bought a Kingston SSDnow v200 256GB from Fry's for $369.99 + 30.52 (tax) - $75 (rebate) which = $325.51

Do you guys think this is a good drive to use with the Macbook, or should I have sprung for a different model like the Crucial M4 256gb for $380 at Amazon? The guy at Fry's said that if I was going to be using it with my Macbook, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference even though the Crucial is faster. "You'd be paying extra for nothing."

Thanks guys.

 

[GoStumpy]

You made the right choice :thumbsup:

Unless you're only in it for benchmarks, you won't notice a difference.

 

[themillak]

is that one of the drives that gets trim support under os x?

 

[paperwastage]

there are trim hacks available for mac. only way to get full (problem-free) support on a mac is to buy official apple ssds, which cost more than an arm and a leg

have a Kingston V+100 96GB running on a mbp. might be interested in getting a v200 128gb or 256gb on it (need more space)

(V100+ doesn't have TRIM, but has aggressive GC that makes it work nicely with OS X w/o trim support... can't find ANY info about the V200, whether it does the same aggressive GC or not 🙁. also, some people have problems getting full read/write speeds with the V200

 

[PyroTechnica]

What is TRIM and why would I want it?

Also, what is GC?

 

[paperwastage]

TRIM = OS-supported Garbage collection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

GC = garbage collection

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4010/kingston-ssdnow-v-plus-100-review

V+100

If you're too lax with your garbage collection algorithm then write speed will eventually suffer. Each write will eventually have a large penalty associated with it, driving write latency up and throughput down. Too aggressive with garbage collection and drive lifespan suffers. NAND can only be written/erased a finite number of times, aggressively cleaning NAND before it's absolutely necessary will keep write performance high at the expense of wearing out NAND quicker.

The V+100 is aggressively tries to reorganize writes and recycle bad blocks, more aggressively than we've seen from any other SSD.

The benefit of this is you get peak performance out of the drive regardless of how much you use it, which is perfect for an OS without TRIM support - ahem, OS X. Now you can see why Apple chose this controller.

 

[Mike64]

there are trim hacks available for mac. only way to get full (problem-free) support on a mac is to buy official apple ssds, which cost more than an arm and a leg

have a Kingston V+100 96GB running on a mbp. might be interested in getting a v200 128gb or 256gb on it (need more space)

(V100+ doesn't have TRIM, but has aggressive GC that makes it work nicely with OS X w/o trim support... can't find ANY info about the V200, whether it does the same aggressive GC or not 🙁. also, some people have problems getting full read/write speeds with the V200

I 'm pretty sure the V+100 does support TRIM, but it doesn't override the internal garbage collection routines, so having it doesn't really serve a purpose as far as I can tell. Kingston specifically mentions that you won't see a performance increase when using these drives using with a TRIM-enabled operating system.

As for the V200, I would assume it does not have the V+100's extra-aggressive internal GC. Kingston advertises that feature very heavily in connection with the V+100, but not the V200: http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/v I think the V+100 series was designed specifically to fill the XP/Vista/MacOS SSD-gap.