Kingston V+100 drives good?

[VirtualLarry]

Just wondering, haven't really heard any issues with them.

Newegg has the 96GB one for $135 FS. Seems to be slightly better price/gig than Crucial M4. Although, the M4 has SATA6G, for future-proofing, but I'm on SATA2 right now.

I could get two 96GB SATA2 SSDs and RAID-0 them. That would bypass the limitation of the SATA2 port, effectively, and give me the equivalent of a 192GB SATA6G SSD, as far as Seq. goes.

 

[Zap]

They're okay. They have been under $100 in a couple hot deals (with rebates) so $135 seems kind of meh.

AnandTech's review of 128GB V+100

Compare SSDs reviewed by AnandTech

Note that regardless of where it falls in benchmarks, it will be faster than a hard drive. When the 96GB drive was under $100, the $/GB was very compelling.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks for posting that link to AT's review of the 128GB V+100 drive. It seems to have rather poor random write speeds. Which is, above all, the whole POINT of an SSD, isn't it?

Maybe I'll just get an M4 and call it a day. 128GB hovers around $180-200.

Still, I like the Intels, but their price/GB is much higher. For the same price as the Crucial 128GB M4, you only get an 80GB Intel 320.

 

[razel]

Rather poor is rather relative. The primary advantage of SSD is access times. I seriously doubt you'll be able to tell the difference and if you did, even care to pay for the difference between modern SSDs in real life if someone blind tested you and you weren't allow to run benchmarks.

 

[frostedflakes]

V+100 are pretty nice. Random read/write aren't as good as some SSDs out there, but they're still significantly higher than most HDDs. They also don't support NCQ, but that's probably not a big deal for a desktop drive, might hurt performance a bit during really heavy multitasking but otherwise not an issue.

The 96GB drives were a great deal on sale, but at regular price the $/GB isn't that much better than other drives. I'd just get the 128GB m4.

 

[Zap]

Thanks for posting that link to AT's review of the 128GB V+100 drive. It seems to have rather poor random write speeds. Which is, above all, the whole POINT of an SSD, isn't it?

No. When do you write to the drive? When you boot Windows? No, that reads. When you run your game? No, that reads. When you start up your favorite applications? No, that reads.

Oh yeah, when you install something.

Do you spend your whole time at your computer installing stuff and never actually, you know, using it? :sneaky:

 

[zlejedi]

http://www.purepc.pl/pamieci_masowe/test_kingston_v100_96128256_gb_stary_ale_jary?page=0,5

You will be hard pressed to find much difference outside of synthetic benchmarks.

 

[WT]

I agree with Zap - $100 is where this drive should be bought. I have this SSD installed in an X4 965 workbench rig and it destroys my Q6700 rig with a WD 1tb Black (no surprise at all there).
Reason I had to use the SSD in PC #2 is that it did not work at all with my s775 750i SLI FTW board. I contacted both eVGA and Kingston and got nowhere, so I moved the SSD to another PC where it performed as expected.

For a power user, the 128gb m4 is a better SSD, but for someone wanting to dip into the SSD waters, the V100+ is a cheap way to go.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've read about the problems with NV 775 chipset boards, seems to be incompatible somehow. (NV boards not supporting AHCI correctly?)

 

[WT]

I've read about the problems with NV 775 chipset boards, seems to be incompatible somehow. (NV boards not supporting AHCI correctly?)

Correct. The BIOS would see the SSD, but I could never get the Win7 installer to see the drive. I tried all 4 SATA ports on the board. Finally gave up and popped it into my MSI 790x-G54 board (AM3) and it worked with no issues.

 

[Emulex]

it has nearly zero NCQ so it benches great with 1 task but QD starts going up it tanks to levels i've never seen before (way slower than x25-V). for most people that is fast but if you are multitasking or running vm's it stinks.