Computex 2014: Kingston Announces V310 & HyperX Fury SSDs, Shows SF3700 And Marvell PCIe SSDs
by Kristian Vättö on June 8, 2014 10:11 AM ESTUnlike many manufacturers, Kingston didn’t have a booth or suite at Computex but instead they held a one-day HyperX gaming event on the top floor of one of Taipei’s many skyscrapers. In addition to the gaming event, Kingston had several upcoming products to show, ranging from Phison based V310 SSDs to PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD with a brand new Marvell controller.
The V310 will be the successor to V300 and is based on Phison S8 controller instead of the SF-2281 found in the V300. The NAND will be Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC, which enables Kingston to go all the way to up to 960GB. Pricing should be quite similar to the V300 but the difference is that the V310 provides the same performance regardless of the data type (incompressible vs compressible). I was told that the official release should take place in about six weeks, so it looks like July will be a busy timeframe for new SSDs.
Kingston is also bringing a new model to their HyperX family: the HyperX Fury. This is yet another SF-2281 drive and similar to the V310 it utilizes Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC NAND. This provides lower cost compared to the HyperX 3K and Kingston is aiming the Fury at the lower-end gaming segment. Capacities are limited to just 120GB and 240GB and the drives should be available soon.
Now, the PCIe stuff. Kingston had two PCIe SSDs to show —one being the SF3700 based HyperX Predator that was already showcased at CES earlier this year and the other being a Marvell based PCIe 2.0 x4 drive. Similar to everyone else, Kingston couldn't really tell us anything new about the SF3700 but Kingston is still aiming for Q4 release. Kingston had the same 80/20 read/write demo to show that LSI showed us earlier but Kingston was able to tell me that the writes are not 100% compressible. Performance was the same 1.3GB/s that we saw earlier, so nothing new in the SF3700 front really.
As for the Marvell based drive, this is the first time Kingston is working with Marvell and they actually had to hire a few engineers since the Marvell platform is different from the others. The firmware development is still in the early stages but Kingston had a live demo running that showed sequential read performance of nearly 1.4GB/s. Release timeframe is still up in the air due to firmware development but we will probably see the drive some time next year.
Kingston also had some DDR4 at their event but the details were very limited. They will have a full lineup ready when the X99 launches but at this point, they were not willing to discuss any details regarding speeds. The module they had at the show was a 2133MHz one (for servers I think) but we will likely see higher speeds for the desktop market. Desktop capacities will be limited to 8GB at launch while server DIMMs will be available in 16GB as well.
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Penti - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
Either way, there will be 16GB DDR4-dimms too for the consumer market. Server market will have even higher capacities.name99 - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
I didn't say 16GB DIMMs won't ship. I said that, IMHO, Kingston only shipping 8, not 16, is substantially limiting its market, given that it is early adopters (who presumably are the sort who care more about buying DDR4 right now) who will be buying DDR4 for the next six months.Penti - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
We don't really know what they will ship. The market this year/early next is Haswell-E (as far as consumers are concerned) so they will probably try to get some of that market.Penti - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
As Haswell-E is quad-channel they have some leeway even with 8GB dimm's. So I guess they can sell them fine, to like gamers.name99 - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
What am I supposed to be looking at in this reference that proves (against everything else you can find on the net: (google "ddr4 one dimm per channel") that 2 dimms per channel are within spec?eanazag - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
The X99 is a Haswell based; similar to IVB-E where they are one series behind. The X99 will be similar to the server side and therefore not the best example of what a Broadwell system will bring to the table.f0d - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
if you look at the x99 motherboards that have been shown they have 8 memory slots on them and i doubt that haswell-e is going to be an 8 channel memory controllerhttp://www.anandtech.com/show/8133/computex-2014-x...
intel must have something that allows them to use 2 dimms per channel and im guessing they will have this also for their dual channel controllers
name99 - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
Does this mean that you can plug 8 DDR4 DIMMs in those slots and have it work?The slots may be there for supporting 8 DDR3 DIMMs. That would be my guess.
name99 - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
Well, on reading the (tiny, blurred) text, they certainly seem to be claiming 8x DDR4 DIMMs. And they don't saying anything about them requiring to be FB.So WTF knows. Certainly this goes against what the specs appear to say.
This slide, for example
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/158824-haswel...
explicitly states for Haswell-E: 4 channels, 1 DIMM per channel
f0d - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
that article was a year ago and im guessing the spec for DDR4 wasnt finished then (it was a "leaked" slide so it could have just been fake also)i do agree that it WAS supposed to be 1 DIMM per channel but all information that is new (as in the last month or so) contradicts this, almost all the haswell-e motherboards that have been shown has 8 slots and i doubt that they are 8 channel memory controllers on them
i think it was a last minute change to the DDR4 spec to allow more than one DIMM per channel
a few others showing 2 per channel
asrock
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8125/computex-2014-x...
"We have quad channel memory, with X99 at two DIMMs per channel."
EVGA
http://wccftech.com/evga-x99-motherboard-prototype...