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It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the real meat of the testing has to be under absolute real world conditions. This proves difficult as to record results we have to narrow down fluctuation. Therefore while we would say these are the most useful results to get from this review, there is always going to be a slight margin for error – its not absolutely scientific.
Firstly we installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition onto each of the drives and performed a clean update from Microsoft with all patches and security fixes. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Firefox and Adobe Design, then we install AVG free antivirus. We used a digital watch for this startup and repeated the test five times for each drive – once we had these five results we averaged the results and took that for the final figure. We also included a standard £60 Western Digital 1TB hard drive for comparison purposes.
If ever you needed a reason to contemplate an SSD it is for the overall responsiveness of the Windows experience, from installation, boot and general application performance. The figures above speak for themselves, a massive time saving with a fully loaded system.
Snow Leopard 10.6.4 Boot Times
Not everyone uses Windows 7, and although TRIM is only supported by this Operating system, I like to expand results a little when possible. I therefore used my Macintosh MacBook pro 17 inch, Generation 5.1 which is based around a 2.93ghz Core 2 Duo processor with 9600m graphics. There is 8GB of DDR3 ram in this machine with a full 3 Gigabit link speed over the nVidia MCP79 AHCI. I also enabled the full 64bit Kernel and Extensions – if you want to read more, check out this article.
While OSX has yet to get fully fledged support for TRIM, the differences between a high quality SSD like this Kingston V100 and a standard mechanical 2.5inch is incredible. From 52 seconds to 17 seconds shows the gains you can receive with a simple drive change over. You don't need to pay Apple £400 for the pleasure either.
Read a review on this on anandtech last week and already have it bookmarked for a purchase. stock seems to be limited however right now which sucks. Thanks for the article, good to see macintosh testing also,. a lot of people will be buying this for t heir macbooks as apple rip them off with their own SSD options.
128GB for under £200, is that a first?
Not a first I think some cheap make did a 120gb for less, but the performance was a suckfest.
Damn. I have been putting off getting an SSD for a year now, this might tip me over. 40GB are only 70 quid, but its far too small, ill end up hating myself going for something that small. 128gb is well usable.
I was looking at the crucial REALSSD, the 64GB model, which is £110 inc vat in the UK, and it has 355mb/s read speeds which is faster than this. the sad thing is though the write is only 70mb/s and I dont have a sata 6 port, so the 355mb/s will be wasted. the crucial realssd 128gb is 225 inc vat, but the write is still slower at 140mb/s
This kingston one is actually pretty much the best value i can see right now, anyone else find something better ?
CrucialREALSSD would be my top choice, cause ive a sata 6 port. otherside this one seems better. the write is quicker, but I dont think you notice that real world too much. otherwise the intel drives would be piled up in a landfill right now.
Price is good. kit is even better, thats a nice deal. I still am not sold on SSD. I know its faster, but im pretty patient, im in no rush to wait 15 seconds rather than 7. Might be different if I worked on a PC all day, but im a casual user. Good review once they get 1TB for £200 count me in 😉
I have one of the 40GB drives and the low rated write speeds dont make much of a difference, only in a few instances. generally the read is much moer important. In this product review however, the product is well balanced which is pretty much the first time for a product at this price. write was always low.
EXcellent product from kingston. they are doing well this year. id buy this, but i need to buy presents for christmas first :p lets hope another price drop happens in january!
im going to buy this when I get paid next week. thanks.
if you can find it AMD4EVER next week, please let us know 😉
The price is lower than anticipated http://www.dabs.com/products/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v100-sata-300-2-5–solid-state-drive-desktop-bundle-7834.html
£170 inc vat !
Got one of these from Aria which arrived today – retail package but without the cables etc. – £150!!! (Something like £157 delivered)
Currently they have 5 in stock: http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Solid+State+Drives/Kingston+128GB+SSDNow+V100++2.5%22+SATA-II+Solid+State+Hard+Drive+?productId=42531
Bargain? I think so :).
153 Pounds, http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247001, 🙂
I just ordered me one of these drives from Ebuyer really doof value at £152 can’t wait to see what the SSD fuss is all about.
Got it for £90 inc delivery brand new on ebay :D:D:D