Introduction

Last week we showed you the new Kingston SSDNow V+100 that uses a new Toshiba controller and offers good mainstream performance, but the current price is quite a bit higher than what we wanted to see. Today we're looking at the new Kingston SSDNow V100 with a Toshiba labeled controller designed in cooperation with JMicron. The V100 is Kingston's new budget series that is designed to meet the needs of mainstream users.

Last year we showed the Kingston SSDNow V Series and the new V100 is the updated replacement model. The new V100 is more of an evolutionary upgrade since it uses the same 64MB cache capacity, but the flash has been upgraded to 32nm (shrunk from 43nm). Both the V and V100 are controlled by a controller based on the JM618, so the main changes rest in the NAND flash and firmware.

The original V was rated at 200MB/s read and 160MB/s write, but the new V100 increases those specifications to 250MB/s read and 230MB/s write. Oddly enough, the V100 has higher read and write sequential transfer performance ratings than the V+100, Kingston's higher end model. We'll take a look at the performance of both in our benchmark results charts and put on a clinic that shows why rated speeds are not all you need to know about SSDs.