Kingston 256GB SSDNow V+ Series SSD Review

PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage is the first objective hardware performance benchmark for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista. PCMark Vantage is perfectly suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista PC from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops to dedicated workstations and hi-end gaming rigs. Regardless of whether the benchmarker is an artist or an IT Professional, PCMark Vantage shows the user where their system soars or falls flat, and how to get the most performance possible out of their hardware. The PCMark Vantage benchmark was run in 64-bit mode for the results shown below.

Benchmark Results: The Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 256GB SSD had an overall score of 26,477 and the individual test results can be seen in the image above.

Comparison Chart Results: The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB hard drive does great in many of the other tests, but falls short of even the slowest SSDs in many of the ‘real world’ tests that PCMark Vantage throws at the drives. It was interesting to us that the Super Talent MasterDrive OX 64GB scored higher than the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB MLC SSD as both use JMicron controllers. But the Kingston V Series uses new firmware that helps prevent the stutter. This newer firmware revision obviously impacts performance just slightly, but we would think that consumers should prefer less performance over having stutters while multi-tasking. The Corsair P256, OCZ Summit and Kingston V+ Series SSDs both use the Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40 controller and the performance between the three drives is nearly identical. The overall winner in this benchmark is the Intel X25-M 160GB second generation drive with 34nm MLC NAND Flash as it tears up this benchmark and beats out other top competitors like the OCZ Vertex EX, Summit and Agility SSDs by a fairly large margin.