2010 Value SSD (~$100) Roundup: Kingston and OCZ take on Intel
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 3, 2010 12:01 AM ESTOverall System Performance using PCMark Vantage
Next up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite. Any performance impacts here would most likely be reflected in the real world.
Combining sequential and random performance into a real world workload is what we get from PCMark Vantage. The overall score has Intel in the lead, followed by Kingston and finally OCZ's Onyx. The standings don't change in the HDD specific Vantage suite.
The memories suite includes a test involving importing pictures into Windows Photo Gallery and editing them, a fairly benign task that easily falls into the category of being very influenced by disk performance.
The TV and Movies tests focus on on video transcoding which is mostly CPU bound, but one of the tests involves Windows Media Center which tends to be disk bound.
The gaming tests are very well suited to SSDs since they spend a good portion of their time focusing on reading textures and loading level data. All of the SSDs dominate here, but as you'll see later on in my gaming tests the benefits of an SSD really vary depending on the game. Take these results as a best case scenario of what can happen, not the norm.
In the Music suite the main test is a multitasking scenario: the test simulates surfing the web in IE7, transcoding an audio file and adding music to Windows Media Player (the most disk intensive portion of the test).
The Communications suite is made up of two tests, both involving light multitasking. The first test simulates data encryption/decryption while running message rules in Windows Mail. The second test simulates web surfing (including opening/closing tabs) in IE7, data decryption and running Windows Defender.
I love PCMark's Productivity test; in this test there are four tasks going on at once, searching through Windows contacts, searching through Windows Mail, browsing multiple webpages in IE7 and loading applications. This is as real world of a scenario as you get and it happens to be representative of one of the most frustrating HDD usage models - trying to do multiple things at once. There's nothing more annoying than trying to launch a simple application while you're doing other things in the background and have the load take forever.
The final PCMark Vantage suite is HDD specific and this is where you'll see the biggest differences between the drives:
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loimlo - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
Despite the same controller, SSDNOW V+ series enjoys better flash memory, thus faster speed, compared to SSDNOW V. That said, I'd purchase Intel G2 rather than SSDNOW V+ given the cost difference is next to none, but performance is better on Intel side. SSDNOW V occucpies better position in comparison to SSDNOW V+ on the market.OK, NOW I'll show you the proof of Toshiba controller in Kingston's SSD across the web reviews.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18757
"Kingston's SSDNow V+ series is our first glimpse of Toshiba's T6UG1XBG controller"
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1242/2/
"Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD controller that is being used on the 30GB boot drive. This is the same exact controller that is used on the higher performing Kingston V+ Seires of SSDs,"
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2968/intel-s-x25-v-k...
"The Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller on this drive is the same controller used in the latest Kingston SSDNow V+ Series drives. "
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1197/2/
"The heart and soul of all Kingston V+ Series SSDs is the Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD controller pictured above."
Phate- - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
So the Toshiba controller is actually the JMicron controller?Quote:
"It's tough to see and even tougher to photograph but stenciled on the controller chip are the letters T-O-S-H-I-B-A which apparently is a JMicron JMF618 controller but branded as Toshiba as they are the manufacturer. This controller does support TRIM for those running Windows 7."
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1237/2/
And 140 euro for a the Kingston V S2 64GB or 210 euro for the Intel Postville 80GB, that is quite a difference. The cost difference is huge.
I think your making some kind of mistake, the huge advantage of the Kingston V S2 series is that it is a lot cheaper. There are four "different" drives: The V, the V+, the V+ S2 and then the V S2.
loimlo - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
First, I'm comparing price of V+ to Intel G2, not V to G2. Second, Toshiba/WD's controller isn't identical to JMicron's reference design mainly because of their in-house firmware tweaks. You can compare Kingston, WD, and JMicron reference design and later you'll find differing speed despite the same IC under the hood in the review(hint: Anandtech's excellent SSD reviews). Last, but not the least, I know there's 2nd generation of Kingston's SSDs, but Kingston still calls them SSDNOW V and SSDNOW V+ on the official website. Kingston never calls V G2 or V+ G2 for their SSD products. In other words, Kingston adopts the very similar way to WD which doesn't explicitly tell the difference between previous and next generation products. You need to specify product model like SNV125S2(30GB)/SNV425S2(64/128GB) to ensure it's V "G2". OK, I've to admit that I've done a lot of work before purchasing a 2nd generation SSDNOW 64GB for myself a few days ago.http://www.kingston.com/ssd/default.asp
Phate- - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
I know that firmware is very important, but I've seen no mention of the fact that it all in all is still the same controller, just with different firmware. Annoyingly enough. (If that is even correct.)And well, you should look at V-series pricing, that's where this debate started. ;) My whole argument is based solely on the point that the new (S2) V-series are very competative in the ssd market, solely based on their competative pricing. As stated above, over here, you can pick up an 64GB S2 V-series for 70 euros less then the intel postville 80GB, which is quite a lot.
And the fact that we are having this discussion makes it even more interesting to properly discuss these ssd's on Anandtech.
loimlo - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
Well, you seem to misunderstand my words. I do think V series is better than V+ in terms of price-to-capacity ration. I'll quote what I wrote before."SSDNOW V occucpies better position in comparison to SSDNOW V+ on the market"
", I'd purchase Intel G2 rather than SSDNOW V+"
Also, I've purchased SSDNOW V series 64GB, so you know my decision.
Btw, I'd like to show my respect and thanks to Anand who made this review and clarified Kingston's TRIM which is missing in previous budget SSD review -- Intel's X25-V & Kingston's 30GB SSDNow V Series: Battle of the $125 SSDs.
MrSpadge - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
I wonder what kind of real world application performance one would get using a normal HDD and one of these small SSDs as Win 7 ReadyBoost drive. Pretty much everything you normally use should be in the cache then, except the video and music collection and games you haven't touched for months.7Enigma - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
I'm glad you mentioned this in the conclusion. I've said it before but for most of the smaller capacity drives (<200GB), and ESPECIALLY these tiny drives, they will predominantly be used as boot drives with secondary large storage mechanical HDD's. Sure someone might put one in a laptop/netbook if they only use it to surf the web, but due to the capacity contraint I really feel these are the perfect-sized drives for desktops that have an extra HDD for mass storage.In that case the Random performance and specifically the READ performance is paramount and shows just how good this Intel drive is (if you can justify the higher cost). I personally feel for this group the StorageBench data is pretty much worthless due to the unlikely usage pattern.
With that said, I think the wait approach is key. Unless you are building a system today waiting for the 80gig 25nm models to come out is a no-brainer. My 80gig G2 Intel SSD is the perfect size IMO for most people as a boot/small set of games/software drive, and to have that for $100 is a STEAL.
I just built my dad a gaming/editing desktop and the combination of an 80gig Intel G2 and 1TB secondary HDD for under $300 total is just about unbeatable.
semo - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
good luck waiting for the 80GB G3s. It is very likely that this will be a very popular drive and will be even harder to get than the G2s when they came out. That's assuming Intel does actually release it on time.I doubt Intel will make such a drastic cut in price this time around since they know the G3s will sell like hotcakes. They might just wait for the competitors to match their performance figures before they start dropping prices (just like in the CPU arena). Or, if we're lucky they might choose to dictate the market and enter at a low price again (depends how badly they really want to get in to the mainstream).
Anosh - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
Something that is (just about) never mentioned/measured in these test are the life of the SSDs.How long can I expect the drive to last? I've been reading on forums about people's SSD drives dying after six months!
StormyParis - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
MS is taking their own sweet time to come out with ReadyBoost for SSD. In the mean time, would it be possible to benchmark a small, OS-only SSD vs USB3 Readyboost ? I'm wondering what makes more sense, the dumb approach of putting everything on a SSD? or intelligent caching. I'm guessing USB3 levels the playing field for ReadyBoost ?