Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB SSD Review

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drive’s read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.

Read

Once again we see that this drive excels at reading small files but its high end has been artificially limited. In fact up until about 64KB sized chunks of data it is one of the best performers we have looked at and it is a crying shame there seems to be a cap in place due to a controller limitation. If we had to make an educated guess, it could be presumed that the use of 5 flash chips instead of 10 hampers the controller's performance.

Write

Once again, when it comes to write speeds of this drive we see abysmally low number and the tipping point where EVERY other drive we have looked at passes the SSDNow 40Gb is a meager 16KB data size. If you take out hard drives this tipping point scales back to 8KB and if you compare it against modern solid state drives (i.e. this generation of drives) it is more like 4KB. It really is disheartening to watch this kick ass controller banging against a glass ceiling that Intel themselves have imposed upon it.