discussion Kingston HyperX Fury 240GB SSD Review

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SATA 2 Performance

SATA 2 Performance

<i>In a perfect world everyone investing in a new solid state drive would have access to a SATA 6GB/s controller which could pass on the TRIM command. In reality not everyone has this and for many the decision comes down either giving up TRIM – never a good idea with most controllers – and running it off a secondary controller; or taking a performance hit and running in SATA 2.0 mode.

These tests will consist of some of our real world and synthetic benchmarks run on our standard 1155 test-bed; but the drive will be attached to an SATA 2 port.

For synthetic we have opted for the newcomer to our charts: Anvil Storage Utilities Pro. For real world we have opted for our Adobe test. These two tests should give you a very good idea of the level of performance impact you can expect from running a modern SATA 6 drive in compatibility mode.</i>

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As expected the Fury does get noticeable slower in SATA 3Gb/s mode, but the results are still competitive. More importantly, most consumers using such an old system will notice a good boost in performance and that really is all that matters for value drives.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Evaluating a drive like Kingston’s Fury 240GB really comes down to understanding its intended market. In this case, a sub-$150 price puts it firmly within the entry level domain alongside so many other new series which are vying for the same buyers. The budget-focused SSD segment has absolutely ballooned in size within the last few months and as a result the Fury finds itself in one heck of a firefight.

We have to applaud Kingston’s decision to move beyond their V300 series’ tarnished reputation and roll the Fury into the HyperX lineup. While the HyperX brand tacked onto a decidedly lower-end SSD may not immediately make sense, it does work here. The Fury 240GB is able to hold its own and provide meaningful performance benefits over traditional hard drives and in the low cost SSD market, that’s really what counts. Buyers want to “feel” a difference, especially when they are sacrificing a lot of capacity to make the jump to a quicker storage medium. That’s exactly what the Fury delivers.

On the surface this should be enough to put the while V300 situation to bed and allow the Fury to stand or fail on its own merits. Unfortunately, there are still some questions which arose from the V300’s drubbing. Remember, the that drive was sent to reviewers with Toggle Mode NAND which was silently changed out for ONFi 2 shortly after its debut, resulting in lower overall performance.

We needed to know how the changing NAND landscape would affect the Fury’s future and how any change would be communicated to buyers. Kingston states this drive has to be equipped with ''Synchronous NAND", but that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. As they say <i>“The average lifecycle of NAND is 12 to 15 months as newer and smaller geometries enter the market. Because of these changes from NAND suppliers, Kingston will ultimately need to move to next generation, different synchronous NAND for the FURY SSD. Again, this NAND will always meet or exceed the given specifications and there is no plan to modify the SSD part numbers to reflect these changes. "</i>.

Kingston’s stance here is completely understandable since current technology can’t stick around forever but a certain amount of openness is warranted. We had hoped that their lesson was learned and any future Fury iteration with revised NAND would have a different part number. That won’t happen. Instead we are once again treated to the same nebulous “meet or exceed specifications” spiel knowing full well that didn’t happen with the V300, not to mention the outrage it caused. So we will say this here and now: if you are reading this review more than 6 months after its publication date, don’t expect the available Fury SSDs to perform identically to what you see here. Replication of performance from one NAND generation to another is impossible, regardless of what companies would have you believe.

So where does this leave the Fury 240GB? It’s actually a pretty decent entry level SSD which competes extremely well against the Crucial MX100, a drive that boasts a newer architecture but similar performance. OCZ's ARC series on the other hand has thrown a new wrench into the works with better throughput retention and a similar price. It also goes a long way towards vindication for the SSD market as a whole; these quick drives have finally reached a point where you’ll get HDD-destroying loading times and decent capacity without spending over $175. That in itself points towards a product segment that’s finally coming into its own.