Kingston Releases SSDNow V200 Series
by Kristian Vättö on November 10, 2011 9:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Kingston
- SSDNow V200
Kingston has released a new SSD lineup named as SSDNow V200. This series comes in 2.5" form factor and is the successor of V100 series, which was released a year ago. Below is a table of the specifications.
| Kingston SSDNow V200 Series Specifications | |||
| Capacity | 64GB | 128GB | 256GB |
| Controller | JMicron JMF66x (?) | ||
| Interface | SATA 6Gb/s | ||
| Max Sequential Read | 260MB/s | 300MB/s | 300MB/s |
| Max Sequential Write | 100MB/s | 190MB/s | 230MB/s |
| 4KB Random Read (IOPS) | 32,000 | 36,000 | 32,000 |
| 4KB Random Write (IOPS) | 1,400 | 2,500 | 4,000 |
| Price | $131 | $216 | $481 |
V200 brings support for SATA 6Gb/s, which is always a welcome addition, although the speeds are more SATA 3Gb/s level. The controller is manufactured by JMicron and it's most likely JMF66x as that is JMicron's first and only SATA 6Gb/s controller if their roadmap is to believe. It was first shown in Computex 2011 and back then, JMicron claimed up to 500MB/s read and 400MB/s write. As the table above shows, something does not add up. V200 is good for only up to 300MB/s, 200MB/s short of the predicted read performance. Either Kingston's firmware is very bad, or JMicron had far too big expectations in June. JMicron's SSD controllers have usually been aimed at low-end SSDs, and JMF66x seems to be no exception. Of course, the other possibility is that the controller is not JMF66x, but a different SATA 6Gb/s controller which is not shown in the roadmap.
Kingston markets V200 as a budget SSD, but I beg to differ. SF-2281 based 60GB OCZ Agility 3 goes for $86 in NewEgg, and 120GB and 240GB versions of this SSD go for $155 and $340 respectively. On average, Agility 3 is 30% cheaper and speed wise it's almost twice as fast. It's possible that resellers will sell V200 at lower prices but a 30% drop is unlikely (the prices in the table are from Kingston's online store).
If you are insterested in cheaper SSDs, stay tuned for our analysis on TLC NAND flash, which will (hopefully) be out soon.
Source: Kingston
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kensiko - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
It will be a theoretical analysis I think, unless you got an OCZ SSD with TLC :PKristian Vättö - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
Hence I said analysis, not a review ;-) Basically, I will go through how TLC differs from SLC and MLC and how that affects performance and endurance. I will also try to explain why multi-bit NAND flash degrades quicker.Nihility - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
According to Wikipedia, TLC has 100-500 write cycles vs 1000-3000 on MLC. I'm sure it'll be even worse when they go to higher resolution fabs.Theoretically, cheap SSDs will be cheap in quality as well.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
The problem is that 100-500 is a huge range. We need a more specific number at certain fab. It may also vary depending on the manufacturer as OCZ couldn't tell me any numbers as they haven't chosen the NAND supplier yet.Anyway, I hope to have the article ready during next week. Most of the stuff is ready now but I need a few clarifications from Intel and other companies.
HaloTechnology - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
This site is now one of my favorites just in 2 weeks !!Confusador - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
Rather off topic, i know, but I just wanted to let you know I'm really looking forward to that article! By all means, take your time to get it right, of course, but but at this point I think we need changes to price and capacity more than performance, and since this is one of the enablers of that it'll be nice to know where we stand.FATCamaro - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
Agility 3 is cheaper because of their great reputation for BSOD's and corruption.Metaluna - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
I stopped reading at Jmicron.It will take at least a couple of generations of stellar performance and reliability before I would trust that company with my data.
Taft12 - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
That goes double for Sandforce!c4v3man - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
You can purchase a Crucial M4 128GB for that kind of price, and have a dependable drive with current-gen performance. Even with people not considering sandforce based drives, you gotta be competitive with them on some level, either performance or price. The M4 is more expensive, but has similar performance, with a good track record of reliability.This drive has to get closer to $1/GB to be taken seriously at those performance numbers...