The Kingston A1000 NVMe SSD Review: Phison E8 Revisited
by Billy Tallis on July 2, 2018 8:00 AM ESTMixed Random Performance
Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%.
The mixed random I/O performance of the Kingston A1000 is disappointing, falling below even the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD. The high-end NVMe SSDs offer at least 2-3 times the overall performance on this test, and the older Phison E7 still counts as high-end here.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency of the Kingston A1000 ranks just as poorly as its performance, but the high-end NVMe SSDs don't quite reach twice the efficiency of the A1000.
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The performance of the A1000 dips very slightly during the early phases of the test, but it's mostly flat until the end where the workload shifts to being mostly writes that can be easily cached and combined. Most higher-performing NVMe SSDs steadily gain performance throughout this test and get a much bigger boost at the very end with the pure write phase of the test.
Mixed Sequential Performance
Our test of mixed sequential reads and writes differs from the mixed random I/O test by performing 128kB sequential accesses rather than 4kB accesses at random locations, and the sequential test is conducted at queue depth 1. The range of mixes tested is the same, and the timing and limits on data transfers are also the same as above.
As with the mixed random I/O test, the Kingston A1000 ranks poorly on the mixed sequential I/O test. This time it isn't outperformed by the Crucial MX500 and instead is tied with it, but the gap between the A1000 and the top NVMe SSDs is much bigger for this test: the 970 EVO is about four times faster than the A1000.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency of the Kingston A1000 on the mixed sequential test is a bit worse than the Crucial MX500 and less than half that of the Toshiba RC100. The A1000 doesn't consume much power in total, but it doesn't deliver enough performance for what it does draw.
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Performance from the A1000 varies a bit over the course of the test, but it's generally a lot closer to constant than most NVMe SSDs. There's no strong trend toward increasing or decreasing performance as the test wears on, and only a small jump at the very end of the test.
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romrunning - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Any NVMe drive that doesn't beat the Intel 600p in every category shouldn't be made. I really wish all mfgs would keep NVMe drives to at least PCI x4 & 8 channels with a minimum performance level that is much higher than SATA. The bar for the next tech level of storage products should be at a higher level than the previous.Forget the low-end marked for NVMe. SATA can easily take care of any needs there.
peevee - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Given that only Samsung barely saturates PCIex2, and only on artificial tests, at this point even x4 is useless, let alone x8. They'll need many more channels.Actually, I'd prefer x1 for ultra-low-power, if it is fully saturated in more or less real-life tests (like AT's "Light"), vs x4 which only saturates 1/10th of x1 capacity.
romrunning - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
I was thinking more along the lines of every mfg creating NVMe drives have to attain to a minimum performance level. It becomes easier to understand what is higher-performing from the end-user's perspective. So if NVMe's minimum performance level is 2x SATA, then anytime you see NVMe you know it's better than SATA. Too bad whatever storage consortium finalized specs for NVMe didn't require min perf levels for storage.It's annoy to me when these mfgs put out "new" drives that don't exceed the older tech.
FunBunny2 - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
" I really wish all mfgs would keep NVMe drives to at least PCI x4 & 8 channels with a minimum performance level that is much higher than SATA. "some wag put it, "you sell the sizzle, not the steak".
Gunbuster - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Okay Kingston, reviews are done, feel free to swap in cheaper/slower NAND chips. ;)Ratman6161 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
In the ATSB Heavy Data Rate chart, for the 1TB 970 EVO, I think you have the full and empty numbers transposed. I.e. you show 525 empty and 635 full. I assume that should be 635 empty and 525 full?Billy Tallis - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
They're not transposed. I'm not sure what happened with those test runs, but I'm re-running them. I do know that Samsung drives lie about when they've finished a secure erase, so it's possible the "empty" drive test run was still working on an erase operation in the background even though I try to ensure all drives have plenty of idle time to finish cleaning up after they claim to be done erasing.leexgx - Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - link
Surprised it works like that when using secure erase, zapping page area and all NAND chips should not take long to do, also what can i use to use secure erase on all drives (seagate own tool seems to lack it, it has full erase but it's not secure erase and it killed my seagate firecuda doing it)SanX - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Everyone here knows that in the shops the average Joe will see on the product tag "Sequential Read 1500 MB/s" which is plain lie and conveniently keeps mum about this. Which test gives 1500, show me? At best 2-3 times less.This site degraded long ago to serve salespeople.
rocky12345 - Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - link
Great review but this drive does seem rather unimpressive for sure. It acts like it doe snot have a dram cache at all since most if it's scores are well below the mark. I like Kingston for their memory products which work well in the systems I build for my clients. These NVMe drives that are considered lower end give a false picture of great speed and performance because NVMe drives are known for their great performance level. Then you get these drives trying to break into this sector and do not perform any where close to what you would expect from a NVMe drive. Heck my samsung 860 Pro 512GB Sata SSD can get better numbers in a lot of the tests done in the review than these cheap low end NVMe drives and it is only based off of the Sata port and limited to a max 600MB's from the port itself that is kinda sad if you think about it really.