Mr.J
Innovator
Over the past few months, we’ve seen a disturbing trend from first Kingston, and now PNY. Manufacturers are launching SSDs with one hardware specification, and then quietly changing the hardware configuration after reviews have gone out. The impacts have been somewhat different (more on that in a moment) but in both cases, unhappy customers are loudly complaining that they’ve been cheated, tricked into paying for a drive they otherwise wouldn’t have purchased.
A blog post at Tweaktown details a reader’s unhappy experience with a new PNY Optima drive. This individual bought the drive expecting that it would feature a Silicon Motion controller, only to discover that the drive they purchased had a different firmware version and a different, SandForce-based controller. When Tweaktown inquired as to the situation, PNY sent back the following: “Yes we did ship some Optima SSD’s with SandForce controllers, but only if they meet the minimum advertised performance levels (in most of the benchmark tests, LSI controllers outperform SMI controllers).” (emphasis added)
Practically, it’s not clear what “minimum advertised performance levels” means because PNY hasn’t actually advertised any apart from a spec sheet that says “up to 60,000 IOPS” with a footnote reading “*Performance based on PNY Internal tests using an IOMeter.” It’s not even clear if they mean Intel’s IOMeter program, or something else — and IOMeter can be configured to test a dizzying array of configuration options.
The Tweaktown blog post doesn’t make clear what performance issues were observed, though it implies they exist. We have more concrete evidence with Kingston and its V300.
Complete article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...itching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews
Not gonna buy or suggest Kingston and PNY products.
A blog post at Tweaktown details a reader’s unhappy experience with a new PNY Optima drive. This individual bought the drive expecting that it would feature a Silicon Motion controller, only to discover that the drive they purchased had a different firmware version and a different, SandForce-based controller. When Tweaktown inquired as to the situation, PNY sent back the following: “Yes we did ship some Optima SSD’s with SandForce controllers, but only if they meet the minimum advertised performance levels (in most of the benchmark tests, LSI controllers outperform SMI controllers).” (emphasis added)
Practically, it’s not clear what “minimum advertised performance levels” means because PNY hasn’t actually advertised any apart from a spec sheet that says “up to 60,000 IOPS” with a footnote reading “*Performance based on PNY Internal tests using an IOMeter.” It’s not even clear if they mean Intel’s IOMeter program, or something else — and IOMeter can be configured to test a dizzying array of configuration options.
The Tweaktown blog post doesn’t make clear what performance issues were observed, though it implies they exist. We have more concrete evidence with Kingston and its V300.
Complete article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...itching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews
Not gonna buy or suggest Kingston and PNY products.
