Kingston’s HyperX and VNow 200 SSDs turn up the heat on the Hard Disk Drive

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-3770K (reference 3.5GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost are on), supplied by Intel.
• EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard (Intel Z77 chipset, shipping and latest Beta BIOS 107 July 26, 2012; USB/PCIe 3.0 Specification; CrossFireX and Quad-SLI using PLX chip for extended PCIe bandwidth)
• ECS Z77H2-A2X motherboard (Intel z77 chipset, shipping BIOS, USB/PCIe 3.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-DH3 Series 7 mATX motherboard (shipping BIOS, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• 8 GB Kingston DDR3 PC 1866 Kingston RAM (2×2, 3×2 and 4×2 GB, dual- and tri-channel at 1833MHz; supplied by Kingston)
• GeForce GTX 670, 2 GB (reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
• 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives
• Kingston HyperX SSD 240 GB, retail desktop upgrade kit, supplied by Kingston
• Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, 240GB, retail desktop upgrade kit, supplied by Kingston
• Kingston Vnow 200 SSD, 128 GB, standalone drive, supplied by Kington
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Overseer RX-I supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Water2.0 Pro watercooler supplied by Thermaltake
• Philips DVD SATA writer/Sony DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD
• ASUS VG278 1920×1080 120Hz 3D Vision 2 ready 27″ display supplied by ASUS/Nvidia

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce WHQL 306.38 drivers
• Latest drivers for Series 7 motherboards.
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• Latest DirectX
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• VSync is off in the control panel.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied if possible; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average rates as noted.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The benchmarks

The Game benchmarks

• Heaven 3.0
• Crysis

Other Tests

• Super Pi
• Fritz Chess Bench
• Custom PC Benchmark
• Cinebench
• x264 HD
• Crystal Disk Mark
• AS SSD
• ATTO2.34
• Crysis 2 folder copy
• HD Tach 3.0.4
• HD Tune 2.55
• Windows startup & shutdown

Synthetic Benching Suites

• SiSoft Sandra 2012 final (2012 was released this week)
• PC Mark Vantage – HDD tests
• PC Mark 7

Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks

• Vantage
• 3DMark11

We have got an interesting project going. First we look at synthetic and real world benches before we head for gaming results.