Wednesday, June 18, 2014

PNY's Optima and Kingston's V300 SSD Component Switch

So, if you didn't know, PNY recently switched out their Optima-series SSD's Silicon Motion controller for a SandForce controller. Ah, the good ol' bait-and-switch. They got the good reviews, switched it out for cheaper components. This is extremely shady, and if exposed, can seriously degrade a company's reputation.
The real problem is: reaching the advertised minimum performance.


The problem: PNY doesn't really advertise minimum performance. On the spec sheet, PNY had put "up to 60,000 IOPS", but not much more. They did put a footnote, however, reading "Performance based on PNY Internal tests using an IOMeter." We don't know whether they mean Intel's IOMeter program, or some other program.
We don't know whether the new controller switch increases performance, or decreases it. LSI (SandForce) controllers typically beat SMI (Silicon Motion) controllers in benchmarks.

Kingston's bait-and-switch

A while back, Kingston switched their V300's NAND from synchronous NAND to asynchronous NAND. The problem this presents is that asynchronous NAND is much slower than synchronous. Dramatically slower.














Data provided by NordicHardware

Kingston's V300 was a highly recommended price-to-performance budget SSD when it first came out. I recommended it to quite a few friends before we knew of the new NAND.

The reason I have to bring this to the attention of you guys, is that we shouldn't trash PNY... yet. We need more concrete proof like Kingston's switch. I'm telling you guys that we should not trash PNY and completely boycott PNY. We need to wait until more evidence comes out before we boycott.


Meanwhile, Kingston deserves it. I highly do not recommend the V300's and I feel Kingston has betrayed us consumers.

See you guys later, and take care everybody.