When we received our sample of Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB, we prepared ourselves to obtaining another set of not-very-high performance numbers typical of SandForce-based SSDs with asynchronous NAND flash, but our expectations never came true. The SSDNow V+200 turned out to be unique in a particular way.
First of all, it contains 25nm flash memory chips from Intel capable of working in synchronous mode but actually working in asynchronous mode. We couldn't find out why and Kingston representatives didn't give us a clear answer, either. It is supposed to be an element of their business strategy employed for marketing reasons.
Second, the SSDNow V+200 is somewhat slower than typical SandForce-based SSDs with asynchronous flash. It is especially slow when accessing random-address 4KB data blocks at a short request queue depth, which has a negative effect on its performance in many desktop applications. The SSDNow V+200 is an average 2-3% slower than reference-design SandForce-based SSDs in benchmarks simulating real-life loads. There are usage scenarios where this gap is as large as 10%.
So, the Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB is a well-made product with excellent accessories and a renowned manufacturer’s tech support. The downside is that it is slower than such competitors as Corsair Force 3 or OCZ Agility 3.
Summing up all of our SSD-related tests, we keep on filling in our summary table where all SSDs are sorted into several groups according to their speed. There are now five such groups which differ greatly from each other, but the SSDs inside each group are almost identical in terms of performance.