I agree...This drive is way overpriced. Does Kingston think it is actually going to sell at that price point? You are much better off with the ADATA drive or the Corsair MP510 IMO. (As well as the plethora of other similar spec'd/priced drives)
in general, I'd have agreed 5 years ago when app storage still leaned toward RDBMS, even sqlite. these days developers are content to read the whole file, just because seq is so much faster than spinning rust.
It still holds true, and as someone who contributes to Postgres and Norio (which is 4x as fast as SQL Server), random is still king. There are a lot of bloom filters and hash functions sitting in front of it all to prevent excessive I/O, but the bottleneck is still very much the random 4K read.
I think you have mistaken 970 with 860. This Kingston SSD will be better than 860, yes. But thats about it. 970 evo plus is way better and way more expensive, atleast where i live. HP EX950 is in the same price range as KC2000, but HP performs much much better. So in the end i agree that Kingston is very overpriced.
Why is Corsair MP510 not among the contenders? It has three times the endurance (1700TBW for the 960GB model), better (I think) performance and probably lower price.
It's stock Phison firmware, I thought Corsair didn't offer their own firmware updates for the MP510 (like many vendors) but I could be wrong. I know there's a method to flash the Phison reference firmware onto a reference drive, but I would only recommend that to the adventurous who don't mind wiping their drives.
Oh, Corsair doesn't offer the newest FW by themselves, I was refering to the stock Phison one that you can flash. :) Haven't seen anyone report a brick so far and the only people who might get a wiped drive are updating from way early FW as far as I saw. But doing a FW update and not backing up is just asking for trouble, whether it be official or not.
You must only be looking at The Destroyer? Too long and too read heavy? If you look at the Heavy test actually I think Adata is killing Samsung in overall performance for way less money. Just don't use the drive full that's all, easy enough to do when you can buy double the amount for the same price.
If you have to keep the drive half empty to avoid losing performance then the effective price per usable GB is higher than the list price. I agree ADATA is a good value for the buck but I wouldn't say they are killing Samsung (or anyone else) in the heavy benchmark.
Every consumer SSD ever loses some performance when 100% full. Some are better (overprovisioning from the factory, SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC, TRIM, garbage collection, write amplification, wear leveling etc.) than others. TLC with SLC caches (which is the norm and great bang/buck) have a smaller SLC cache the fuller the drive gets. 42GB at empty is a typical figure for 512/1TB drives I think and it gets smaller. Keeping 10% free was an often advised figure in the days of MLC and garbage collection routines. I'd stick to that or 50/100 GB depending on size. My 1 TB system SSD has between 50 and 150GB free and I don't want to go below 50GB free. Things have generally become much better and if you run consumer workloads you will hardly notice a difference going nearly full.
Thank you for the reply @Death666Angel. It will be my main storage, will have the Operating System running and I'll be doing video editing and rendering. I was looking for 2TB options and wanted to stay away from the Samsungs because of my budget. The Corsair MP510 and the ADATA seemed to be the best options available.
more like 1/4 over-provisioned, so the math still very much favours Adata and more of them unless your power bill are something fierce or your system density is a key priority.
I didn't mean they are unbeatable. More like, the 970's are already a year on the market and still beat this latest and greatest kingston SSD with their "budget" offering.
Thanks Billy! One suggestion: Show price-performance ratios for the key parameters. Yes, most of us would love to have a 1.5 or 2 TB Optane SSD in our "if I won the lottery " system, but that is just not the real world. Any chance of such a rating, even as a summary score of sorts?
SSD pricing, and all memory (DRAM/NAND) for that matter, is too dynamic to make such graph useful. Tomorrow's price might be totally different, not to forget pricing in different stores, regions, sales etc.
The Samsung 840 500GB SSD (first TLC drive with "the bug") I used as a system drive for 5 years had only 12TB TBW to it. And I do like to install windows every once in a while and I rotate a lot of my steam library. I did have a separate 750GB download HDD for videos and large images. But honestly, if 1.2PB writes seem small to you, what are you doing looking in the consumer review section? :D
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RSAUser - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
As stated in the conclusion, overpriced, especially at 1TB if matching the 970 Evo Plus which has way better performance.High end pricing does not work with lower middle of the pack performance.
sircolby45 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
I agree...This drive is way overpriced. Does Kingston think it is actually going to sell at that price point? You are much better off with the ADATA drive or the Corsair MP510 IMO. (As well as the plethora of other similar spec'd/priced drives)bug77 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Actually, this will be faster than the 970 EVO in real life.DigitalFreak - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Considering the 970 EVO is very close to the 970 EVO Plus in performance, I don't see that happening.bug77 - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
That's because you're looking at sequential speeds. SSDs are bottlenecked by their 4k random reads and there this drive does better then Samsung.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
"SSDs are bottlenecked by their 4k random reads"in general, I'd have agreed 5 years ago when app storage still leaned toward RDBMS, even sqlite. these days developers are content to read the whole file, just because seq is so much faster than spinning rust.
patrickjp93 - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link
It still holds true, and as someone who contributes to Postgres and Norio (which is 4x as fast as SQL Server), random is still king. There are a lot of bloom filters and hash functions sitting in front of it all to prevent excessive I/O, but the bottleneck is still very much the random 4K read.DeepLake - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
I think you have mistaken 970 with 860. This Kingston SSD will be better than 860, yes. But thats about it. 970 evo plus is way better and way more expensive, atleast where i live. HP EX950 is in the same price range as KC2000, but HP performs much much better. So in the end i agree that Kingston is very overpriced.inmytaxi - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link
How do you know that high end pricing won't work with lower middle of the pack performance? Data?kobblestown - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Why is Corsair MP510 not among the contenders? It has three times the endurance (1700TBW for the 960GB model), better (I think) performance and probably lower price.LtGoonRush - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
The Silicon Power P34A80 uses the same controller and NAND as the MP510, but with newer, better-performing firmware.Death666Angel - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Do they use custom FW or just stock Phison one? You can install 12.3 (which I think is the latest) stock Phison FW on the MP510.LtGoonRush - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
It's stock Phison firmware, I thought Corsair didn't offer their own firmware updates for the MP510 (like many vendors) but I could be wrong. I know there's a method to flash the Phison reference firmware onto a reference drive, but I would only recommend that to the adventurous who don't mind wiping their drives.Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
Oh, Corsair doesn't offer the newest FW by themselves, I was refering to the stock Phison one that you can flash. :) Haven't seen anyone report a brick so far and the only people who might get a wiped drive are updating from way early FW as far as I saw. But doing a FW update and not backing up is just asking for trouble, whether it be official or not.sandberg123 - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Actually, this will be faster than the 970 EVO in real life.Foeketijn - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
If I were in the SSD R&D business and not working for SAMSUNG, I would be getting depressed by now.Alistair - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
You must only be looking at The Destroyer? Too long and too read heavy? If you look at the Heavy test actually I think Adata is killing Samsung in overall performance for way less money. Just don't use the drive full that's all, easy enough to do when you can buy double the amount for the same price.TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
If you have to keep the drive half empty to avoid losing performance then the effective price per usable GB is higher than the list price. I agree ADATA is a good value for the buck but I wouldn't say they are killing Samsung (or anyone else) in the heavy benchmark.Strikamos - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
I'm planning on buying the Corsair MP510! Does it have the same problem as the ADATA? Loosing performance when full.. Thank youDeath666Angel - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
Every consumer SSD ever loses some performance when 100% full. Some are better (overprovisioning from the factory, SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC, TRIM, garbage collection, write amplification, wear leveling etc.) than others. TLC with SLC caches (which is the norm and great bang/buck) have a smaller SLC cache the fuller the drive gets. 42GB at empty is a typical figure for 512/1TB drives I think and it gets smaller. Keeping 10% free was an often advised figure in the days of MLC and garbage collection routines. I'd stick to that or 50/100 GB depending on size. My 1 TB system SSD has between 50 and 150GB free and I don't want to go below 50GB free. Things have generally become much better and if you run consumer workloads you will hardly notice a difference going nearly full.Strikamos - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
Thank you for the reply @Death666Angel. It will be my main storage, will have the Operating System running and I'll be doing video editing and rendering.I was looking for 2TB options and wanted to stay away from the Samsungs because of my budget. The Corsair MP510 and the ADATA seemed to be the best options available.
patrickjp93 - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link
more like 1/4 over-provisioned, so the math still very much favours Adata and more of them unless your power bill are something fierce or your system density is a key priority.Foeketijn - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
I didn't mean they are unbeatable. More like, the 970's are already a year on the market and still beat this latest and greatest kingston SSD with their "budget" offering.eastcoast_pete - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Thanks Billy! One suggestion: Show price-performance ratios for the key parameters. Yes, most of us would love to have a 1.5 or 2 TB Optane SSD in our "if I won the lottery " system, but that is just not the real world. Any chance of such a rating, even as a summary score of sorts?Kristian Vättö - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
SSD pricing, and all memory (DRAM/NAND) for that matter, is too dynamic to make such graph useful. Tomorrow's price might be totally different, not to forget pricing in different stores, regions, sales etc.erinadreno - Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - link
Is that just me or there's too many NAND packages for 1 TB drive?[email protected] - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link
2TB write endurance 1200 TB? 600 writes and it heads south? Misprint?patrickjp93 - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link
That's just what they guarantee it to. It's corporate butt covering.Death666Angel - Sunday, July 28, 2019 - link
The Samsung 840 500GB SSD (first TLC drive with "the bug") I used as a system drive for 5 years had only 12TB TBW to it. And I do like to install windows every once in a while and I rotate a lot of my steam library. I did have a separate 750GB download HDD for videos and large images. But honestly, if 1.2PB writes seem small to you, what are you doing looking in the consumer review section? :D