Kingmax SATA III SSD SMP35 Client (240GB) - An Affordable SandForce Drive

An Introduction to Kingmax

Solid state drives (SSDs) have become pretty affordable of late, and mainstream users and enthusiasts alike have been snapping them up like hot cakes all in the name of boosting their system’s performance.

If you have never heard of Kingmax, it is because they are a relatively new player to the storage industry. Although they were established in 1989, it was only in the late 90s that they started manufacturing their own storage and memory solutions. Now the company makes flash drives, external hard disks, memory cards, memory modules and also SSDs. With a significant presence in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, Kingmax is now hoping to expand its businesses abroad.

One of the latest products from Kingmax is the SATA III SSD SMP35 Client (it’s a mouthful so we are just going to call it the SMP35 Client from now on). It’s an SSD drive that uses the latest SATA 6Gbps interface and comes in 60GB, 120GB, 240GB and 480GB variants. It also uses the very popular SandForce SF-2281 controller. This puts it right in the sights of other popular SSDs such as Kingston’s HyperX and the recently reviewed Intel SSD 520 series.

The Drive

The Kingmax SMP35 Client drive itself looks just like any other drive with the exception of the Kingmax sticker that’s plastered on it which details information such as model and serial number and so on. Here’s a quick look at the drive.

Test Setup

The drives tested on our new storage testbed, has the following system specifications:

• Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
• MSI Z68A-GD80 (Intel Z68 chipset)
• 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM
• MSI GeForce 8600GTS
• Windows 7

The list of SSDs tested are as follows:

• Kingmax SATA III SSD SMP35 Client (240GB) (Firmware: L0306)
• Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
• Intel SSD 510 Series (240GB)
• Crucial M4 SSD (240GB)
• Kingston HyperX SSD (240GB)
• OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB)
• Patriot Pyro SE (240GB)
• Crucial C300 (64GB)
• Intel X25-M Gen.2 (160GB)

The new Kingmax SMP35 Client will be pitted against the current crop of high-end consumer SSDs. It will be interesting to see how it matches Intel’s latest SSD 520 series which has been received positively thus far. Also, we want to see how it will perform against both the Kingston and OCZ drives, both of which also use the same SF-2281 controller from SandForce. Also take note that the Kingmax drive has just been flashed with the newest firmware (version L0306), which is available at Kingmax’s website.

We have also included older drives such as the Crucial C300 and even the Intel X25-M, one of the fastest drives in their heyday, to see where does the Kingmax stand against current and old drives in case you're contemplating to upgrade them.

The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

• AS-SSD benchmark 1.6.4
• HD Tune Pro 4.6
• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
• PCMark 7
• PCMark Vantage
• Iometer (version 2006.07.27)

AS SSD

AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first, which takes away one of the strong advantages of this controller. This is good to test drives like the Kingmax SMP35 Client, Intel SSD 520, Kingston HyperX, OCZ Vertex 3 and other such drives against SSDs that don't use the SF-2281 controller to gain an upper hand.

The Kingmax SMP35 Client got off to a disappointing start as it recorded the worse read and write speeds by far. For almost all instances, its read and write speeds were nearly only half that of the competition. The only instance where it posted decent speeds were when reading 4k file sizes.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1

Much like HD Tune, CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data.

Like AS SSD, the Kingmax SMP35 Client posted poor speeds on CrystalDiskMark. For most parts, it was only about half as fast the competition and it was only decent while measuring 4k read and write speeds. The initial firmware of the Kingmax drive produced worse results, so this is clearly an indication of the drive's firmware advancement that certainly has room to improve.

HD Tune Pro 4.6

HD Tune is one of the most popular and widely-used benchmarking tools for measuring the performance of storage drives. Here, the Kingmax SMP35 Client was actually a pretty strong performer. Despite the lower than expected minimum readings, read and write performance was generally very solid with average speeds easily capable of matching the current crop of high-end consumer SSDs. Random read and write IOPS and random read and write access times were very competitive too. 

PCMark 7

PCMark 7 is the latest benchmarking suite from FutureMark that evaluates the performance of Windows 7 machines. It tests a wide range workloads and aspects of the system ranging from computation, image and video manipulation and storage. We’ll be looking solely at the storage test here.

Performance on PCMark 7 was slightly lackluster when compared to the current crop of speed demons, such as the Intel SSD 520 series and Kingston HyperX. As for the breakdown, we found that it was lagging considerably when it came to starting applications and gaming, which contributed to its slightly lower overall score.

PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage might have been around for quite some time, but it is still a fairly accurate representation of how the drives might be used in real-world scenarios. We are focusing on the hard drive test suite which comprises of tasks such as loading of applications to media creation.

On PCMark Vantage, the Kingmax SMP35 Client absolutely blitzed the competition, posting scores that ousted even the Intel SSD 520 series. As you can see in the breakdown graphs, the Kingmax came in top in nearly every aspect of the test suite. 

Iometer Results (Part 1)

Lastly, we put the drives through the rigorous grind of Iometer, with different workloads and I/O queue depths. We have chosen to show results from a queue depth of 1 to 5 as this better represents the workloads a typical consumer might face.

Looking at Iometer, the Kingmax’s performance puts it slightly towards the rear of the pack. Compared to drives that use the same SandForce controller, such as the Kingston HyperX and Patriot Pyro SE, the Kingmax is clearly a little less quick. It was also outclassed by the pretty old Intel X25-M too. Just for kicks, we've included the WD VelociRaptor's performance scores too.

Iometer Results (Part 2)

Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Response times of the Kingmax SMP35 Client were on the high side. Overall, it was generally slower than the other drives that were using the same SandForce controller. Take note that lower figures are better in this series of graphs. 

Aggressive Pricing, More Choices for Consumers

On the performance front, the Kingmax SMP35 Client is no slouch but its performance is a bit of a mixed bag. This is because while performance on HD Tune, PCMark7 and Iometer was solid and its scores on PCMark Vantage were the highest we’ve seen yet, it was considerably slower than the competition on AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark. Although we could not pinpoint to reasons as to why, we think it’s likely because of its higher capacity chips - 32GB as opposed to 16GB ones used on most other drives - and also probably an inherent problem with the chips disagreeing with the two benchmarks. But more than the latter, firmware plays a large part of it performance capabilities as the original firmware that the drive came with had much lower performance results than the updated firmware used to garner the results shown in this review. As such, we feel that there's still room for improvement with the right tweaks made to best utilize its hardware components.

However, where it truly redeems itself is its price. At S$429 for the 240GB variant, it is considerably more affordable than its competitors with similar capacities - $100 less than the Intel SSD 520 series and a whopping $200 less than the Kingston HyperX. Considering the difference in price here, we think this makes the Kingmax SMP35 Client pretty good value for money even if it's a little inconsistent in terms of performance.

All in all, the Kingmax SMP35 Client won’t upset the present leaders in the high-end consumer SSD category, but its aggressive pricing and decent performance does give consumers looking for an SSD to speed up their rig more to choose from. And that can only be a good thing.

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