Kingston SSDNow V+100 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 11, 2010 3:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Kingston
- SSDNow V+100
Random Read/Write Speed
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews.
Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. We use both standard pseudo randomly generated data (data is random within a write, but duplicated between writes) for each write as well as fully random data (data is random within a write and random across most writes) to show you both the maximum and minimum performance offered by SandForce based drives in these tests. The average performance of SF drives will likely be somewhere in between the two values for each drive you see in the graphs. For an understanding of why the type of data you're writing matters, read our original SandForce article.
Random write performance has always been the weak spot of Toshiba’s controllers, this latest combination of controller and firmware is no different. Compared to all other SSDs, the Toshiba based SSDNow V+ 100 doesn’t look very good. It’s even slower than the old Indilinx based Corsair Nova. It’s still over 2x the speed of the fastest desktop 3.5” hard drive however, and enough to give you the feel of an SSD for the most part.
Crucial loses a decent amount of performance when going from 128GB to 64GB. The RealSSD C300 drops below even the worst case scenario performance of the Corsair Force F40.
Note that not all SandForce drives are created equal here. If a manufacturer doesn’t meet SandForce’s sales requirements, their drives are capped at a maximum of 50MB/s here. This is the case with the Patriot Inferno, although OCZ’s Agility 2 voluntarily enforces the limit.
Many of you have asked for random write performance at higher queue depths. What I have below is our 4KB random write test performed at a queue depth of 32 instead of 3. While the vast majority of desktop usage models experience queue depths of 0 - 5, higher depths are possible in heavy I/O (and multi-user) workloads:
Kingston's performance doesn't change regardless of queue depth. The SandForce drives either stay the same or get a little faster as they have more requests to parallelize and write sequentially.
Our random read test is similar to the random write test however we lift the 8GB LBA space restriction:
Random read speed is much better, but still not as good as the competition. At 19.7MB/s the SSDNow V+ 100 is a couple of orders of magnitude faster than the 600GB VelociRaptor. The Indilinx based Corsair Nova is even faster however, and nothing can top the RealSSD C300.
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7Enigma - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
I've ready your other posts and you are selecting a very specific situation which most people will not encounter (that is copy/paste using XP with no SSD tweaks). That's like putting in an NVIDIA video card and not installing the drivers and complaining about performance. The XP OS was designed so far before SSD's were even available to enterprise markets let alone the consumer space its no wonder they don't perform well.The vast majority of people are no longer on XP (trust me I was one of the last to hold out due to my dispise for Vista). But you are artificially setting limitations on a product and then using it to generalize performance in all situations that are to you "real world".
I have real concerns about the Sandforce drives due to variable performance. I have an Intel 80gig G2 SSD and am still amazed at how well it does (to me) in the most important benchmarks, that is random read/write and sequential read. Even with the cheap(er) pricing of SSD's and the *hopefully* significant decrease once we get to the next node with Intel's 3rd generation these are still not capable of storing the majority of our data (unless you think 1-2 grand is chump change). That being said these are mainly going to be access drives and rarely used for moving large amounts of data around (which is why the sequential write becomes much less important for day to day use, besides the odd large install such as a video game).
I keep my 80gig with about 45GB free. Win7 install (including User data), a couple programs, the current 1-3 games I'm playing and that's it. I have a 250GB secondary 7200rpm drive for music/movies/etc. and a larger external HDD for backup and infrequently used data.
Out of Box Experience - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Quote:these are mainly going to be access drives and rarely used for moving large amounts of data around (which is why the sequential write becomes much less important for day to day use, besides the odd large install such as a video game).
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In that case, I'd grab a Crucial Real SSD
Best read speeds now on Sata 2 and reasonable for Sata 3
64GB is very reasonably priced for the read speeds you will get
Out of Box Experience - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link
Quote:The vast majority of people are no longer on XP (trust me I was one of the last to hold out due to my dispise for Vista). But you are artificially setting limitations on a product and then using it to generalize performance in all situations that are to you "real world".
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Where did you get that incorrect data?
It will be a few years before Windows 7 sells more copies than XP
XP is still used on more computers than Vista and Windows 7 combined!
Any SSD manufacturer who misleads their customers into thinking that their SSD's are plug and play compatible with XP by omission of pertinent information should go into spam marketing!
Why should the consumer spend another $200 for a new OS to use a Vertex when Intel SSD's work just fine with XP without all the tweaks?
ceomrman - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
I can't stand all the SSD articles with no real world benchies at all. I don't care about transfer speed or even IOPS. I care about how fast it boots, how fast it loads my work, displays my porn, plays my games, etc.slickr - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
I only see theoretical performances of the drives, while this is some indication of how it would perform in real case scenarios, its not the most accurate and its hard to translate into real world.I would like some tests that test all of the SDD's abilities at once.
For example running a virus scan while pasting 2GB or big and small data, while moving hundreds of pictures into a image viewer, all on top while downloading a torrent and surfing the web.
B - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Great Table. Would be nice if there was a column identifying which controller was used in each of the drives.snakyjake - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Objective performance measurements are good to have, however these comments are suggesting some difficulties in interpretation because the majority of us don't know how to relate to a synthetic benchmark. My recommendation is to create some user profiles (gamer, video artists, graphics artist, serious web surfer, media PC, low power, etc). Have some people utilize the machines and ask for their feedback.Because here's my bottom line: I don't want to pay for more than I'll notice. If PEOPLE can't tell the difference between a top synthetic rated drive versus middle of the pack....then I don't want to pay extra.
For example: If a more expensive SSD drive will not speed up my Media Center PC, I don't want to pay the extra. I want to know what a real person thinks and experiences. Rather talk to my buddies than get comments from a robot performing synthetic tests.
GullLars - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Dear Anand, I would love a reply here, since I've raised these points in the past, and been ignored."Concerned enough to recommend running it with 20% free space at all times (at least). The more free space you have, the better job the controller can do wear leveling."
I feel the need to critique this statement. If TRIM is not active, there is no difference whatsoever if you use 10% or 100% of the LBAs avalible to the user, since the drive can't tell the difference.
The only way you could make sure 20% of the NAND is free at all times is to not partition it in the first place (or not include it in a partition after a secure erase).
Also, you've included 4KB random write at QD 32, but still not 4KB random read. If you compare your results, you will see a much larger difference between read performance as QD scales than you do for write. This is due to write coalessing and attenuation, while reads don't have this benefit.
I feel both random read and write @ QD 32 should be included to show what the drives are capable of within the NCQ spec. Ideally would be a graph showing IOPS by QD scaling, but i understand that it may be a bit much work.
When benchmarking my own SSDs, i scale 4 dimentions in IOmeter; Read:write ratio, seq:ran ratio, block size, and QD. Due to size of the data set, i only scale them against each other at 4KB and a couple of larger sizes. A few thousand data points is enough pr drive :P
Ao1 - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
Quote:“SandForce's partners who have to pay a big chunk of their margins to SandForce as well as the NAND vendor are actually delivering the best value in SSDs. Kingston and Western Digital also deliver a great value. Not Crucial/Micron and not Intel, which is not only disappointing but inexcusable. These companies actually own the fabs where the NAND is made and in the case of Intel, they actually produce the controller itself”.
Are you forgetting that Intel spent over 2 billion on the JV with Micron? They are the ones carrying the investment risk, not the likes of OCZ.
Also Intel spend money and time on getting their products right before market and use much higher quality components throughout, not least better QA’d NAND. (Intel do not sell SSD grade NAND. They sell NAND that has to be further processed by whoever buys it).
You have consistently ignored these facts and they make a big difference.
Whilst I’m at it I can’t understand your assertion that SF drives are so good. There are countless problems with them even now after numerous f/w updates. They degrade badly with uncompressible data, they have weak GC and they don’t trim in the same way as other drives. It’s quite easy to see performance drop by 50%, even OCZ have admitted that. Read performance, without writing also degrades.
I used to look forward to your reviews but it seems your objectivity when it comes to the X25 and C300 in favour of SF drives is seriously lacking.
Ao1 - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
From OCZ's forum:"Here is the thing, if you hammer the driver with say enough writes that the drive would under normal use/see in 7 days within a few hrs, the drive will slow down for 7 days, maybe longer. It does this to protect the nand life. So your guys seeing a 50% drop may actually see 30% which is the normal drop, then a further 20% because at some stage they have hammered the drive and then not realised its going to take 5 days or longer for the speed to creep back up. Also remember this write quantity slowdown is further impacted by how you use the drive after you have hammered it."
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...l=1#post528...