Kingston dials things up to 256GB with new SSDNow V+ line
By Donald Melanson 
posted August 11th 2009 3:02AM
posted August 11th 2009 3:02AM
Kingston is still a relative newcomer to the SSD game, but it looks like it's already well on its way to endless, somewhat confusing product refreshes, with it now rolling out three drives in its new SSDNow V+ line. Available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, the new drives best the previous non-plus SSDNow V line with read and write speeds up to 220MB/sec and 180MB/sec, respectively, and pack some higher input and output operations per second (or IOPS) to boot, which should also help to deliver an overall boost in speed. As you might expect, however, while things start a somewhat reasonable $254 for the 64GB model, things get decidedly more out of reach from there, with the 128GB drive running $500 firm, and the 256GB drive setting you back a hefty $992.
Almost $1,000 for 256 GB..... I'll pass....
Ill stick with Intel for now.
Thats a huge rip-off! You can get an OCZ Vertex 256GB for $600-700
Aren't these more expensive than the Intel G2 SSDs?
Yeah, and it looks like a Samsung controller.
There was a day when a 250GB hard drive was close to a grand. These will come down as the technology improves.
Thats not guaranteed at all. Who knows if the SSD market will explode and if the scales of economy will ever make them competitve with mechanical drives. Considering we have 50+ years of engineering, manufacturing, and marketing with mechanical drives, I doubt SSDs will ever match them in price.
The real question is how much more can I expect to spend on a SSD? Right now we're not looking at 2x or 3x but over 10x the price for roughly less than twice the performance.
Perhaps they will come down and stabilize at 3 or 4x the price. That will attract geeks/gamers/enterprise but not budget OEM builders. Im very interested in SSDs, but we just arent seeing the price drops this year and probably not next. Perhaps they will be the defacto standard in 2012 or 2013 or so.
so the crucial M225's are a lot cheaper than this and faster, and came out before these, so why the heck did Kingston price these so high?
unless they're SLC, then fair play to them since the 256GB is about the same price as OCZ's Vertex-EX.
and I thought the V standed for value?
The more the merrier, although those prices are still way out of reach. Didn't intel say their next lineup of SSD would be much cheaper?
What makes it worth that much hard-earned $$$? Surely not the brand?
I'll stick with my Intel, if anything I'll get a X25-M G2 or a 250GB Vertex/Summit
Are these the ones that use the same guts as the new Intel drives? I read somewhere that Kingston was the only one allowed to use the same stuff as Intel in their SSDs...
No, they are not. I heard they use a Samsung controller. They are comparable to the OCZ Summit series (Samsung controller and memory) they have some issues with the firmware. The Samsung firmware with "Garbage Collection" does not function properly and not at all in RAID mode and they also lack in performance compared to the Vertex Series and Intel SSD's.
For more info: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=760&type=expert&pid=1
No, they are not. I heard they use a Samsung controller. They are comparable to the OCZ Summit series (Samsung controller and memory) they have some issues with the firmware. The Samsung firmware with "Garbage Collection" does not function properly and not at all in RAID mode and they also lack in performance compared to the Vertex Series and Intel SSD's.
For more info: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=760&type=expert&pid=1
Effen commenting system, responds like a snail. took more than 10 min to post so I reentered it again, sorry.