Kingston V-series 128GB SSD. Worth it?

I am thinking of buying this SSD: Newegg.com - Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/128GB 2.5" Desktop Bundle 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD).

I am looking for an improvement in boot time and hopefully some increased responsiveness of the system. I am not too concerned about moving large files, more about the boot time reduction.

My question is: Is it worth it? Will I get a nice boost in performance of the system?
Some people said this SSD has horrible read speeds which make it useless.

What are your opinions.

 

Yes that will do what you want it to do.

Also consider Seagate Momentus XT 500GB. It's cheaper and will also boot fast.

I see you have dual hard drives, the Seagate Momentus XT 250GB might be enough storage for you.

 

Thx for the reply.

How would you compare, boot of Kingston SSD to a Momentus XT? Is the SSD going to be noticeably faster?

Aren't the slow speeds of the SSD going to hinder it's performance.

And, if I buy the 250GB Seagate Momentus XT, will I see a boost in performance compard to stock HDD? I mean a visible increase, not just a growth in a benchmark score, if you see what I mean.

 

The 250GB XT costs 99. That less than half the SSD costs while it has double the capacity.

boot will be slightly faster with the SSD. Not sure if the price difference is worth it.

What's you usage pattern?

What slow speeds do you mean?
Sequential Read up to 200MB/s
Sequential Write up to 160MB/s

 

I will mainly use Word and surf the web, with occasional gaming.

Someone on a different forum, told me that due to the slow speeds of the Kingston SSD, I will not get an increase in performance worth the money that I spend.

Ok, let's say I buy the Momentus XT and do an Acronis Disk Image of my old OS HDD (with partitions) and copy it to the new disk. I will boot a few times. Now, will I get an increase in performance, or do I have to do a clean install? The reason I'm asking this is because there are a few partions on my current HDD with Recovery and Tools that I would want to keep, so that I could restore the system if something happens.

 

Yes you will get an increase in boot time.

 

Like as: an increase in performance (reduced boot time) or unwanted increase in boot time.

 

The Kingston SSD will be significantly faster than the Seagate Momentus XT, especially in activities that require accessing a large number of small files (e.g. during OS boot), and when there are multiple file read/write requests (e.g. multitasking). The low seek times and high I/O's per second of an SSD will totally overshadow any mechanical hard drive.

With a relatively "slow" SSD, I am able to achieve 25 second boot time from power-on to desktop, with 8 seconds of that in POST. You can't do that with a mechanical drive.

 

As Phil said, you'll see faster boot times using the Kingston SSD. However, performing a clean OS install will almost always net you faster boot times regardless of the type of storage device you're using, SSD or HDD.

Which brings to mind a question: do you really need an SSD to achieve faster boot times? The long and short of it, in my opinion, is no. If faster boot times are all that concern you, consider performing a clean OS install on your HDD, or at the very least, dump unnecessary files and optimize/defrag your hard drive often.

There are many utilities available to increase system performance and hard drive boot times. You might want to take a look and see if this is something worth pursuing. Granted, these utilities will not offer the same level of performance in regards to boot times as a standalone SSD would, but it will save you some green. Which brings me to my next point.

To be honest, buying an SSD right now is not strategically advantageous. Many SSD manufacturers in the very near future (such as Intel and their 3G SSDs) are readying their new products for release. This will subsequently drive down the prices on older, but still plenty capable SSDs.

If you are still intent on making an SSD purchase, my advice to you is to wait until the next generation SSDs are released, and then make a purchase on the older tech. In most cases, you'll be paying less for an SSD with considerably more performance and storage capability than the Kingston you linked.

Nevertheless, if you are 100% intent on getting an SSD now, I recommend the Corsair V128 or F120.

 

The fastest boot I got with the Momentus XT on my DM3 laptop (w/o tweaks and with all software installed, monitor and external keyboard connected) was 22,6 seconds. The fastest boot with Agility 2 120GB was 22,0 seconds. Tiny difference.

Here's what Anandtech measured with a high powered desktop:


Kingston SNV 425 will be in between of X25-V and Momentus XT, I expect

For your usage I'd recommend the Momentus XT. It will feel nearly as fast as an SSD. See my review here: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5818&review=ssd+vs+hard+drive

The Kingston will be fine too, but you're spending a lot more money for a small increase in performance with your usage.

 

Thanks for the advice. I think I will hold off buying an SSD after your recommendation, at least for some time. I will see how much will the prices of Intel X-25M G2 fall after 25nm will be released. Maybe then I'll start my consideration again, as suggested by garetjax.
I'll be keeping an eye on a new generation of the Momentus drives, if they will ever come out (with 6/8 GB hopefully).

 

I do agree with garetjax's advice to do a clean install to boost boot times. I don't agree on waiting for the next best thing.

PS. 4GB cache is already enough for your usage. And the Kingston V series is not a bad SSD.

 

I completely agree with you on this point, and I have said the same thing to many people on a variety of different issues during my tenure here at NBR. However, what I am suggesting is not for the OP to wait and buy the next best thing that comes out of SSD land. Invariably, this leads to being caught in a never-ending upgrade loop where one never buys anything because it will be eclisped by something newer and better to replace it.

What I am suggesting is for the OP to use this opportunity to wait for the "newer and better" SSD's to arrive so that the cost of obtaining a better performing, higher capacity SSD for les can be realized. Granted, if this was 6-8 months ago, then this advice would not be well received at all. However, we are currently on the cusp of new generation SSD's being released very soon, and it seems to me that buying a SSD now is not strategically advantageous because of this.

I still maintain that once these new SSD's are released, prices of old gen SSD's will fall (as technology always does). Thus, the money spent on a SSD now will go much further in purchasing a higher capacity, better performing last gen SSD than what the Kingston model the OP linked currently offers.

 

Well there might indeed be better SSD in three months time (I read they're expected around the holiday season). But when those SSDs (Intel G3) are released, the Sandforce II SSDs will probably come out three months later, and so on.

Anyway, for his light usage I think a 250GB Momentus XT is a much better buy. It's only $99 and will perform close to a SSD with light usage.

 

Agreed. That Momentus XT is a fantastic drive at a great price. It's probably what I would do if I were in the OP's shoes.

 

OP , for ur uses , SSD is too much.. Momentus XT will be a much better and cheaper option.

 

Phil i'm a noob but i have a dm3 such as yourself and would like to upgrade to a ssd due to having a a nice dell Lat E6510 and loving the ability to mult - task so many apps. I'm looking at the 120GB intel x25 - M 2.5. Would this be the best ssd for the money? Also does it matter if I have the AMD processor rather than the intel? I know intel has very good support for their drives.

 

For faster OS boot times or single-app load times, either an SSD or a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive will give you a nice bump over traditional mechanical HDD's.

However, increased "responsiveness" of the system will probably lead you towards buying an SSD. A system typically becomes annoyingly unresponsive when you're trying to multitask, and load / install multiple applications at the same time. Your system will slow down significantly, as the HDD thrashes around trying to keep up with all of the read/write requests. A hybrid hard drive like the Seagate Momentus XT does not help much here either in this kind of scenario.

There are two ways to measure how well a drive does in this multitasking scenario: Random 4KB read times (almost every file read you do with your computer is a random read), and I/O's per second (IOPS). In these areas, an SSD is two full orders of magnitude faster (100x faster) than mechanical hard drives or hybrid hard drives. Random read speeds go from ~0.5MBps --> 40+ MBps. IOPS goes from ~500IOPS --> 40,000 IOPS. It is literally like going from a 56Kbps dial-up modem to a 5.6MBps broadband connection.

This is from the same Anandtech.com article linked by Phil:


And here is a video I created, showing how well SSD's handle multitasking. I use an extreme example, where I boot into Windows 7 + load every single application on my laptop in about 1 minute.
YouTube - Why I love my SSD - Windows 7 boot + loading 27 applications in about 1 minute.

 

AMD or Intel CPU (processor) is irrelevant to what you are asking.

Right now, the best SSD's to get are 120GB drives with Intel controllers (Intel X25-M 120GB) or SandForce controllers (e.g. OCZ Vertex 2 120GB). Those drives can be bought for about $200 for 120GB capacities, are top-performers, and give you the best bang-for-your-buck when it comes to performance and storage capacities.