As with our previous SSD evaluations, this is not going to be the usual Solid-State Drive (SSD) review touting the theoretical advantages of the SSD over the mechanical Hard Drive (HDD). Instead, our evaluation is going to focus on Kingston’s SSDNow V200 and HyperX SSDs. Over two years ago we concluded that Kingston was making performance progress with their SSD lineup and in each follow-up review since then, we found performance increases.

This is ABT’s fifth SSD evaluation and we are now going to look at the performance differences within the Kingston SSD lineup. Our test bed uses Ivy Bridge, Intel’s latest consumer and enthusiast platform. We are using our Core i7-3770K and GTX 670 at stock settings on a EVGA Z77 FTW USB 3.0/PCIe 3.0 to again test the differenced between 3 performance grades of Kingston SSDs versus our Seagate Barracuda HDD.

Kingston offers two basic consumer lines – their Kingston HyperX SSD for the enthusiast who wants extreme performance, and their VNow lineup which further subdivides into 3 lines. We will be looking at the Consumer SSDNow V drives and evaluating the 128GB version of VNow 200 (SV200S37A/128G).

We also will be comparing two of Kingston’s Enthusiast SSDs from their HyperX lineup, the HyperX 3K SSD (left) and the HyperX SSD (below right).

All three of these drives differ from each other in price and in capabilities – you will pay approximately $200 to $400 for 240GB to 256GB Kingston drive. The stand-alone version of the Kingston Vnow 200 128GB SSD (SV200S37A/128G) as we received it from Kingston, can be found at Amazon for $94.75, and the 256GB version is $210.25. We received complete desktop upgrade kits of the 240GB HyperX SSDs from Kingston, however. Here are the contents of a HyperX Kingston upgrade kit, pictured below:

Moving up in performance over the SSDnow V200 series, the 240 GB HyperX 3K SSD costs $174.64 at Amazon. The 240GB HyperX SSD is Kingston’s fastest SSD and it costs $412.20 at Amazon. Both of these HyperX SSDs include Kington’s “upgrade kit” which include Acronis cloning, backup and imaging software as well as hardware to make migrating to SSD from a hard disk drive, painless. Stand alone versions of Kingston SSDs generally cost about $10 less than the upgrade kit at retail.

Kingston SSDs feature an independent garbage collection function that maintains a system at optimum performance level. This is especially important for systems running on Windows XP or other OSes which doesn’t feature TRIM, and it will also help organizations extend the software cycle on their systems, delaying upgrades of operating systems and compatible applications.

Let’s take a quick overview of each drive. The features and benefits of the SSDNow series extend to all Kingston SSDs. Two other benefits should be noted especially for notebooks – power savings and durability. A SSD uses significantly less battery power than a HDD and is also less prone to failure from dropping it.

Kington’s SSDNow V200

From Kingston’s site:

Kingston’s SSDNow V200 lets you stretch your system without stretching your budget. Designed for notebook and desktop hard drive replacements and upgrades, it maximizes your computer investment while boosting the performance of the system and its applications. It’s available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacity kits that make switching to an SSD easy and affordable. Kits include cables, brackets, cloning software and HDD enclosure and installation video everything needed to get started.

SSDNow V200 makes computers more responsive than ever. Boot up is quicker and applications load faster than ever before. More reliable and more durable than a traditional hard drive, V200 is backed by a three-year warranty and legendary Kingston® reliability.

Kingston SSDNow V200 128GB Features and Specifications:

F E AT U R E S / B E N E F I T S

• Faster — boots system and applications faster
• Reliable — with no moving parts, solid-state drives are less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
• Convenient — all-in-one kits with all the components for easy installation
• Multiple capacities — to fit your needs
• Form Factor — 2.5-inch drive available in both 7.0mm (64GB & 128GB only) & 9.5mm (256GB) to fit more system
• Silent — runs silent and cool

S P E C I F I C AT I O N S

Form factor 2.5″

Interface

SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) – with backwards compatibility to SATA Rev. 2.0

Capacities

64GB, 128GB, 256GB

Sequential Reads

• 64GB — 260MB/s
• 128GB — 300MB/s
• 256GB — 300MB/s

Sequential Writes

• 64GB —100MB/s
• 128GB — 190MB/s
• 256GB — 230MB/s

Sustained Random 4k Read/Write

• 64GB — up to 39K/ up to 3.3k IOPS
• 128GB — up to 38K/ up to 5.5K IOPS
• 256GB — up to 32K/ up to 4K IOPS

Power Consumption 2.0 W (TYP) Idle / 4.8 W (TYP) Write

Storage temperatures -40°C ~ 85°C

Operating temperatures 0°C ~ 70°C

Dimensions

• 64 and 128GB — 69.8mm x 100.1mm x 7mm
• 256GB — 69.8mm x 100.1mm x 9.5mm

Weight

• 64GB & 128GB — 88g
• 256GB — 105.2g

Vibration operating 2.17G Peak (7–800Hz)

Vibration non-operating 20G Peak (10–2000Hz)

Life expectancy 1 million hours MTBF

Warranty/support three-year warranty with free technical support

The 128GB SSDNow V200 is a 100% Kingston-branded solid-state drive which uses a Toshiba-branded JMicron JMF66 controller which supports the SATA 6.0GB/s specification. The VNow 200 uses eight 16GB Toshiba’s 32nm MLC NAND modules. However, instead of concentrating on the technical, we are going to be looking at the advantages that a PC gamer might have using a SSD over a fast mechanical hard drive. And of course, we will compare the Kingston consumer VNow line with the more expensive HyperX 3K and HyperX SSDs.

Next, let’s look at Kingston’s less expensive entry in their enthusiast Class SSD – the HyperX 3K.

 

Kingston’s HyperX 3K SSD

From Kingston’s site:

Budget-minded gamers and enthusiasts will benefit from the lower price of Kingston’s new HyperX® 3K SSD. This solid-state drive combines premium 3000 program-erase cycle synchronous NAND with the second generation SandForce® controller. Its lower price means more users can experience ultraresponsive gaming, multitasking and multimedia computing power.

3K loads games and applications faster, increases frames per second (FPS) for an improved gaming experience and allows for quick transfers and edits of large media files.

HyperX 3K provides high-speed SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) performance and blazing fast random and sequential read/write speeds. SandForce DuraClass™ technology provides the latest data integrity protection for ultimate endurance over the entire life of the drive.

HyperX 3K SSD comes in a sleek, black and aluminum case design, accentuating the look of any power user’s system. For added peace of mind, HyperX 3K SSD is backed by a three-year warranty and legendary Kingston® reliability.

FEATURES / SPEC I F I C AT I O N S

Form factor 2.5″

Controller SandForce® SF-2281

Components MLC NAND (3k P/E Cycles)

Interface SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)

Capacities 90GB, 120GB, 240GB, 480GB

Sequential reads

• 90GB / 120GB / 240GB – 555MB/s
• 480GB – 540MB/s

Sequential writes

• 90GB / 120GB / 240GB – 510MB/s
• 480GB – 450MB/s

Sustained Random 4K R/W4

• 90GB – 20,000/50,000 IOPS
• 120GB – 20,000/60,000 IOPS
• 240GB – 40,000/57,000 IOPS
• 480GB – 60,000/45,000 IOPS

Max Random 4K R/W4

• 90GB – 85,000/74,000 IOPS
• 120GB – 85,000/73,000 IOPS
• 240GB – 86,000/60,000 IOPS
• 480GB – 75,000/48,000 IOPS

PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score

• 90GB / 120GB / 240GB / 480GB: 60,000

Supports S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, and Garbage Collection

Power Consumption

• 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.58 W (TYP) Read / 2.11 W (TYP) Write

Dimensions 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm

Weight 97g

Operating temperatures 0°C ~ 70°C

Storage temperatures -40°C ~ 85°C

Shock Resistance 1500G

Vibration operating 2.17G

Vibration non-operating 20G

MTBF 1,000,000 Hrs

 

Kingston’s HyperX SSD

From Kingston’s site:

Kingston’s HyperX® SSD combines the latest SandForce® controller technology with premium NAND Flash, reducing load times while increasing performance and endurance. It provides high-speed SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s) transfer speeds for larger bandwidth, which power users require for advanced gaming, multitasking and multimedia computing power. Kingston’s HyperX SSD lets users load games and applications faster, increase frames per second (FPS) and quickly transfer and edit large media files. It’s cool, silent and requires less power with no additional cooling requirements. When configuring the HyperX SSD partition, the user can choose between having the maximum available capacity for data storage, or give up a little space to increase performance and endurance. This additional space is called over provisioning on an SSD. The amount of performance and endurance increase depends upon the type of data being stored on the HyperX SSD. The more data that is MPEG, JPG, ZIP, ARC, file types, the greater the benefit for this increased over provisioning. HyperX SSD uses an advanced wear leveling technology that distributes writes evenly across all the Flash blocks in the SSD to maximize overall drive endurance. Additionally, this ensures that the individual Flash memory blocks are consumed at a very balanced rate, not to exceed a 2% difference between the most often written blocks and least written. This enables the HyperX SSD to provide the longest possible life for the user while maintaining optimal performance.

HyperX SSD is also covered by a three-year warranty and legendary Kingston® reliability.

F EATURES / SPEC I F I C AT I O N S

Form factor 2.5″

Controller SandForce® SF-2281

Components Intel® 25nm Compute Quality MLC NAND

(5k P/E Cycles)

Interface SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)

Capacities 120GB, 240GB, 480GB

Sequential reads

• 6Gb/s3 120GB / 240GB – 555MB/s
• 480GB – 540MB/s

Sequential writes

• 6Gb/s3 120GB / 240GB – 510MB/s
• 480GB – 450MB/s

Sustained Random 4K R/W4

• 120GB – 20,000/60,000 IOPS
• 240GB – 40,000/57,000 IOPS
• 480GB – 60,000/45,000 IOPS

Max Random 4K R/W4

• 120GB – 87,000/70,000 IOPS
• 240GB – 87,000/58,000 IOPS
• 480GB – 75,000/47,000 IOPS

PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score

• 120GB / 240GB / 480GB: 58,000

Supports S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, and Garbage Collection

Power Consumption

• 120GB: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.6 W (TYP) Read / 2.0 W (TYP) Write
• 240GB: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.5 W (TYP) Read / 2.05 W (TYP) Write
• 480GB: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.5 W (TYP) Read / 1.65 W (TYP) Write

Dimensions 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm

Weight 97g

Operating temperatures 0°C ~ 70°C

Storage temperatures -40°C ~ 85°C

Shock Resistance 1500G

Vibration operating 2.17G

Vibration non-operating 20G

MTBF 1,000,000 Hrs

 

Differences between the HyperX SSD and the HyperX 3K SSD

The specifications of the HyperX SSD and the HyperX 3K SSD differ mostly in the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles the NAND inside the SSD is rated for. Programming a NAND cell is destructive to the cell itself and over many cycles it will no longer hold data. Intel’s 25nm MLC NAND is binned and rated for either 3,000 or 5,000 program/erase cycles. As an example, power user might use up a single program/erase cycle as a daily average of writing up to 50GB of data which means approximately 3,000-5,000 days of useful life – the difference between just over 8 years and nearly 14 years of use between the two drives.

The standard HyperX blue SSD ships with 5K 25nm Intel MLC NAND, while the HyperX 3K ships with the less expensive 3K variety. Most competing drives also use the 3K NAND with the 5K variety used for premium SSDs. Because the price difference between the two HyperX SSDs are so extreme, we will test to see how the 3K NAND SSD performs compared to the 5K version. Both SSDs are warrantied for 3 years and both should last for at least twice that time even under heavy usage.

In every repect both the HyperX SSD and the HyperX 3K SSD are identical except for the rated life of the NAND. The exterior is identical except for the color – the standard HyperX is accented blue while the 3K is black. And the interior and the firmware are the same. Even the bundles are identical right down to the multi-bit screwdriver and Acronis Cloning software.

SSD vs. HDD

Our evaluations of SSDs vs HDDs are ongoing and we even performed a complete notebook “makeover” as we dumped our slow 5400 rpm HDD for a speedy Kingston Vnow series SSD and upgraded our system memory from 2GB to 4GB with fast Kingston notebook memory. This simple upgrade together with an OS reinstall, speeded up our system enough for us to keep on using the notebook to this day!

Of course, we shall briefly rerun many our earlier synthetic and real world testing to see if we can notice the performance difference between the drives. To properly bring you this review, we used the same two Seagate 500GB 7200.12 HDDs that we purchased from Buy.com for $40 each at the beginning of last year. We payed $80 total costs for 1TB of total storage in two separate mechanical HDDs! Compare this to our 128GB Kingston SSDNow v200 which now retails for $99.99 and we would still have to say, the SSD had better be much faster.

We have also noticed that SSD pricing were dropping very slowly until the floods in Thailand last year which affected adversely HDD production worldwide. Hard Disk Drive prices shot up substantially and SSDs partially filled the void. Competition brought SSD pricing down and in many cases, at or below the $1-per-gigabyte storage costs that have long been considered breakthrough low SSD pricing. It was expected to take a couple of years but SSDs are now regularly offered at or below this price point.

From past testing, we concluded that a SSD certainly did make our PC noticeably much faster – especially for loading and shutting down Windows and for launching applications. We also concluded that if you are a gamer, you can still be served well by a fast mechanical hard disk drive if storage and expense is an issue. Evaluating the Kingston SSD from a gamer’s perspective means finding the practical advantages of the SSD over the HDD, and we have had more than three months of daily comparing all three SSD’s performance with each other and with our mechanical drives.

Because a Solid-State Drive’s performance tends to degrade over time, many reviews are carried out with the SSD in a completely brand new state each time every single benchmark test is run. That means the SSD is secure-erased after each test is run. To be fair, we made sure to start out with our SSD drives brand new, and then we used our drives in normal day-to-day usage and tested them against each other for the benchmarks that you will see after they had been used for weeks. Read on as we share our continued journey into the further practical advantages of the SSD over the HDD from a gamer’s perspective.

The SSDNow V200 is targeted as an upgrade path for mainstream consumers including gamers as a cost-effective performance upgrade option in upgrading a desktop or notebook. The original Kingston Now V-series 128GB SSD that we reviewed two years ago had a good price to performance ratio. With an updated controller and 32nm NAND, read and write performance has markedly increased from the previous-generation Kingston SSDNow V100 Series SSD to the ‘+’ series and again we have a boost in read performance with the latest Kingston drives.

Two years ago, the older SSDNow V-series drive was capable of up to 200MB/sec. read; 160MB/sec. write whereas the next generation could manage up to 250MB/sec. read; 230MB/sec. write; a solid improvement for the same list price. And now we have the latest SSDNow V200 series (not ‘+’) to evaluate which shows itself to be overall faster with a read speed of 300MB/sec but a slower write speed of 190MB/second.

The Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

HDD pricing has somewhat recovered a year after the floods in Thailand which halted much of the word production and supplies are no longer constrained. HDDs also tend to improve performance incrementally and the newer drive’s cases are also thinner compared with the drives from just two years ago. The newer Seagate Barracuda HDDs are quieter and faster than the older series although the rotation speed remains the same at 7200 rpm.

Mechanical HDDs have become much cheaper again since the flood, and a 3TB drive may now be purchased for about the same costs as a 250GB drive just three years ago! How does a Solid-State Drive stack up in terms of price/performance to these mechanical drives in a practical way for gamers?

Differences between the bundle and stand alone units

The HyperX Series bundle is a bit different than the Vnow Series bundle; last time Kingston sent ABT the 128GB SSDNow V100 desktop kit which was bundled a bit differently then the 128GB SSDNow V100 notebook kit, and now we are evaluating the HyperX upgrade kits (as now differentiated from the SSDNow V200 “Stand alone” drive).

With the bundle, Kingston includes the SATA and power cables for the end user along with the cloning software so we also have the option of making the SSD the C drive and putting the bulk of the data on a mechanical storage drive.  The Kingston 128GB Vnow SSD arrives in a blister pack.

In one scenario, the SSD becomes a boot drive for the PC and it is an option that can work well. If we have a notebook HDD (or another SSD), we can use it as storage inside the USB 2.0 case that Kingston provides in the upgrade kit. So you basically get both the notebook kit and the desktop kit in one great bundle. The only reason we can think of getting the stand alone drive, is if you already have a upgrade kit and don’t need the hardware or software included in a duplicate bundle.

Setting up a SSD and a HDD together is beyond the scope of this article, but you will be able to access anything on the SSD lightning-fast to take advantage of your favorite applications and games and still use the mechanical drive seamlessly, just as it would be without the SSD as boot drive. Not all SSDs have great read and write times, so not every program will benefit from being on a SSD, but all will benefit from the lightning-fast response from the seek times that a SSD enjoys over the HDD.

To to do a notebook upgrade one would use the 2.5″ enclosure and the SSD and cloning software. In that case, we would install the SSD into the notebook, plug the old 5400 rpm HDD into the supplied USB 2.0 enclosure, pop in the disc and clone the HDD onto the SSD. When finished, the old notebook HDD will now become an external hard drive to give more storage. Or one can remove the notebook’s optical drive and use the SSD together with the old HDD inside of the notebook. If you choose to do a desktop upgrade, you can use the SATA cable and the rails instead from the same kit.

Let’s open the box.

Unboxing

Here is the retail box that you would buy with the desktop upgrade kit. As you can see the contents are well-packed for transport safely to your door. Inside the box, the precious contents are well-protected by the soft packing material. The SSD is rather tough anyway and Kingston even had a contest to show how durable they are.

We note the promised tech service and the 3-year warranty are printed right on the box as well as the advantages of the product as this SSD will also be featured in retail brick and mortar stores as well as online.

Here are the contents: the 2.5″ SSD, the SATA data cable, the SATA power cable, the case and the cloning software CD.

Here is the SSD’s other side and we see the standard connections.

As you can see, the physical look and dimensions of both SSDs are the same and our SSDs all have the standard SATA power and data connectors.

The stand-alone Kingston Vnow 200 SSD is packaged quite differently as it comes in a plastic clamshell that is cut open with scissors. There is no cloning software nor any cables nor connectors included. The drive comes in a 7mm thickness for more installation choices like the one we received, or else in the standard 9.5mm thickness.

Our Vnow 200 standalone package includes instructions and an adhesive adapter to allow you to mount your new 7mm Kingston SSD in a 9.5mm drive bay so that it does not slip around.  Comparing all 3 SSDs, it is easy to see that our VNow 200 128GB model is thinner. It is available in a 7mm or 9mm thickness.

Below is Thermaltake’s BlackXduet USB and eSATA hard drive dock which proved very useful in reading data from internal drives that are now accessed as external drives. Check out the review published by Leon Hyman. We also use find the built-in USB 3.0 docks on the top of our Thermaltake Chaser MK-I and Overseer RX-I are also extremely useful for transferring data quickly.

We set up Windows 7 64-bit on one of our Seagate 500GB 7200.12 Barracuda hard drives along with two or three games, favorite applications and benching tools. We put about 100GB or so of data on our HDD so that we would not have any issues cloning the HDD to our 3 SSDs, the one with the smallest capacity being 128GB. We made sure to leave room for additional files and applications to its maximum of about 119GB.

We used the supplied Acronis cloning software on the Kingston-supplied CD to make a exact copy of our HDD to all three SSDs (individually, each in under a half-hour), and we were able to then boot from any of the now identically cloned drives. The Acronis cloning software is very fast and very easy to use. However, before we get to the benching, let’s recap the SSD and what makes it unique from mechanical drives.

One mistake many enthusiasts make is to think of a SSD like a mechanical HDD. Instead, think of it as a giant flash drive with the strengths and weaknesses inherent to that kind of storage. MrK’s article on the previous series of Kingston SSDNow is extraordinarily well-written and detailed, and it would be good to review it if you are not familar with Solid-State storage. Also, here is his article on the faster but much more expensive Patriot TorqX 256 GB SSD which goes into even more detail. MrK explains the strengths and weaknesses of the SSD. Instead of repeating his information, this section will be the briefiest of recaps and we will focus instead on secure erase and performance degradation.

Because of the way data is written to and erased from a SSD, the write speeds will go down as more and more data is written to it. There is a definite need for TRIM and other garbage collection. When Windows 7 identifies the drive as a SSD, it enables the TRIM command for the drive when files are deleted from it. The TRIM command tells the SSD controller to delete the pages on the NAND flash block when the user deletes the data. The entire block containing the data is copied into the memory cache and then the block is erased. After this procedure, the data without the user-deleted part is rewritten back to the block from the memory cache. This results in longer delete times, but allows the write performance to remain nearly like-new.

Secure Erase and Performance Degradation

A secure erase restores your drive to a like-new state where each cell is effectively zeroed out. So its performance would be like-new also as if it was fresh out of the box. Simply cloning over from an HDD to SSD would not zero out the cells like a secure erase would. This is because you’re not guaranteed to be writing over the same cells. In a clone, information is just being transferred over, not like erasing a cell first and then writing to it. On a good SSD such as Kingston’s SSDNow v200 or HyperX series, there is simply no need to secure erase periodically, but whenever you format or re-image your drive, it’s a great idea.

This is perhaps the most detailed yet simplified step-by-step way to secure erase your SSD – something you must do (for safety) if you ever sell it.  Be aware that your SSD’s BIOS may have some sort of mechanism that prevents the secure erase tool from detecting the SSD for secure erase. We had no such issues with any of our Kingston drives.

Note on testing.

We began our testing with our SSD long after it was in a brand-new state as delivered by Kingston. We also began with one well-used Seagate 500GB HDD which is the 12th generation of their 7200 rpm desktop series. We installed Windows 7 64-bit operating system and a bit less than 80 GB of programs, applications and games. Next, we used the Acronis Cloning software included on the included Kingston CD to effortlessly copy in just a few minutes the entire hard drive image to the Kingston SSD which now became a bootable drive.

We repeated this two more times to have identical images across all 4 drives. Generally, all of our testing was done with the SSD in a used condition and the drive was not erased (as many benchers do) before each bench that is run or after a single day of normal day-to-day use.

Although we have evaluation copies of some of the SW we tested, generally we used the freeware or shareware version if there was a choice. There are some remarkable tools available for testing hard disk and solid-state drive performance and all of the ones that we used are considered excellent.

Let’s check out our test bed.

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.

 

Synthetic Tests

CrystalDiskMark

Crystal DiskMark version 3.0 is an excellent way to test your motherboard/HD’s performance. CrystalDiskMark is primarily a HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to measure sequential data and random read/write speeds in 4k blocks and 512k blocks.

Here are two key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

· Sequential reads/writes

· Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes

First we test with our 500GB Seagate 7200.12 mechanical hard drive and we see very decent performance.

Now we move on to the 128GB VNow 200 SSD for more than double the performance!

Now the 3K SSD which is as much a difference over the Vnow 200 SSD as the consumer series SSD is faster than the HDD.

Finally the HyperX SSD receives basically the same score as the 3K SSD; slightly less but well within the benchmark’s margin of error.

And now we put the sequential read/write information into a comparison chart:

All the SSDs leave the HDD far behind in this benchmark. The VNow 200 SSD is slower in this test than the HyperX enthusiast SSDs

HD TACH

HD Tach v3.0.4.0 is a hard drive benchmark utility which will measure the average read speed, the random access time, and the CPU utilization. Here is the VNow 200 128GB SSD result:

From looking at the chart, what is impressive is the performance in HD Tach of our HDD. First we look the HDD’s sequential read speed test is graphed along with the random access time and CPU utilization – average read is 110.5 MB/s, which we shall see is less than half that of the SSD: at the sequential read speed of the 128 GB SSD is graphed along with the random access time and CPU utilization – average read is 223.5 MB/s.

 

The VNow 200 128 GB SSD scores surprisingly weak compared to the HDD in this test. In contrast, both HyperX SSDs score far higher

 

HD Tune 2.55

HD Tune is a hard disk utility. We are using the default setting of 64KB blocks for testing. First we run the standard benchmark with the all of our four drives.

The only thing to note is that the 3K edition is faster in the averages than the 5K version. From looking at the tests, the more expensive SSD has a higher burst rate and higher average transfer rate; it falls short in the minimum where it appears to drop off suddenly in one place that lowers its average.

There is absolutely no comparison in these synthetic tests. All SSDs are much faster than the mechanical HDD but the performance Kingston HyperX simply blow away the VNow 200 SSD’s transfer rate performance in this test.

ASSD

ASSD is designed primarily for Solid-State Drives. There are four synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD and are carried out without use of the operating system caches. In Seq-test the program measures how long it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. In the 4K test the read and write performance for random 4K blocks is determined. The 4K-64-thrd test corresponds to the 4K procedure except that the read and write operations on 64 threads are distributed as with the usual start of a program.

In the copying test following folders are created: ISO (two large files), programs (typical program folder with many small files) and games (folder of a game with small and large files). These three folders are copied with a simple copy command of the operating system. The cache is turned on for this test. The practice tests show the performance of the SSD with simultaneous read and write operations.

First up is the HDD:

Next is the Vnow 200 SSD

Third is the HyperX 3K SSD

And finally the HyperX SSD

Here is the chart comparing the scores:

As in most of our tests, the SSDs leaves the HDD far behind in the benchmarks and the HyperX SSDs are significantly faster than the VNow 200 SSD.

ATTO

The ATTO Disk Benchmark is an aging performance measurement tool which measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize the performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Here are the results of the HDD benchmark.And now we show the ATTO Disk benchmark results for our 128GB VNow 200 SSD: Here is the results of our HyperX 3K SSD. And finally, here is the HyperX SSD:

It doesn’t really prove anything, but synthetic benchmarks are definitely faster on the SSD vs the HDD. We also note the continuing trend of performance differences between the consumer and the enthusiast-grade SSDs. In some areas, one is faster than the other, but we want to know practically if one is faster. Perhaps PCMark Vantage may provide a clue.

PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista and 7 that offers one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. A PCMark Vantage score is a rough measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks. The measurement for the PCMark Vantage hard drive suite is the total score with the scoring for each test further broken down. There are a total of eight hard drive tests within PCMark Vantage and all eight are run to measure the relative performance of the SSD vs the HDD we tested.

The HDD Test suite in PCMark Vantage consists of the following 8 tests and we are going to be paying particular attention to the disk drive tests:

• HDD 1- Windows Defender
• HDD 2- Game HDD
• HDD 3- Importing pictures
• HDD 4- Windows Vista start-up
• HDD 5- Video editing
• HDD 6- Media Center
• HDD 7- Adding music to Windows Media Player
• HDD 8- Application loading

First we run the standard PCMark Vantage benchmark suite using our Seagate 500GB 7200.12 hard drive paying attention to the HDD test suite.

Now we run the same benchmark suite with our Kingston SSDNow V200.

Next up is the HyperX 3K SSD:

Finally we run the same benchmark suite with our 240GB Kingston HyperX SSD.

In all cases, the SSDs are faster with PCMark Vantage than with the mechanical hard disk drives and the HyperX drives are faster for some applications than the SSD VNow series.

We also see from the chart above that the kind of drive used in the benchmarking will affect the final score of most benchmark suites but we have to look at the actual drive test to see big differences between SSD performance.

PC Mark 7

PCMark 7 is Futuremark’s updated verion of our last benchmark suite but for Windows 7. Just as the overall score is affected by the drive used in Vantage, the same applies to PCMark 7. The standard version of the suite does not give a breakdown score for the SSD/HDD tests. Here is the overall chart.

As in all synthetic suites, the overall score depend a great deal on the drive used. However, there is not a lot of difference in the scores between a consumer SSD and a high-performance enthusiast drive running the entire benchmark suite.

SANDRA 2010 SP1

SANDRA, short for the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant is an information and diagnostic utility. It provides a tremendous amount of information about every hardware and software component in your PC. It also provides various benchmarks including for measuring and reporting disk performance. Although we used the last verson of 2011, SANDRA 2012 came out last week and it is an incredibly useful suite which we also use regularly as a diagnostic utility.

Here is a summary chart of SANDRA’s benchmarks that we ran:

As usual, both SSDs are significantly faster that the HDD for synthetic benchmarking when benching physical disks and file systems; very little else is affected.  We do see huge differences between the HDD and the SSDs and also that the HyperX SSDs are faster than the VNow 200 series.  Let’s head for real world testing.

More Testing

CustomPC Benchmark

CustomPC benchmark use widely available open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC’s performance. These tests themselves are not synthetic benchmarks but instead they use real world image, video and multi-tasking tasks to test the performance of your computer. We are looking to see if tasks are faster on the SSD than the HDD.

The tests are:

• GIMP Image Editing
• H.264 Video Encoding
• Multi-tasking

Here are the results expressed in a chart

All of the SSDs are a few seconds faster than the HDD in each task, the biggesst difference being in multi-tasking; and there is really only slight variation overall between the SSDs.

 

Super Pi

Here is Super Pi which calculates Pi to 32 million places if you like.  We ran Super Pi on our HDD and then on our 3 SSDs to see if there was any difference.

Let’s compare the speed of the drives to see if there is any difference.

No difference really.  Please continue on to Fritz Chess Bench.

Fritz Chess Bench

Fritz Chess Benchmark is found within the game’s program files and basically it crunches numbers to test your processor’s speed. Deep Fritz takes advantage of massive calculations and multi-threaded performance to work any CPU fully. It loads all threads 100% and will drive your CPU temperatures way up.

Besides showing relative speed when compared to a P3 1.0GHz CPU, it also shows the nodes completed. The faster your CPU, the more nodes completed. First up is the Core i7-3770K at 4.2GHz.

The HDD makes no practical difference.

 

CINEBENCH

CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, CINEMA 4D. This latest 11.5 version of CINEBENCH can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically.

Now we run the benchmarks and chart our results: 

Of course, there is no difference in the CPU test and only slight variation in the OpenGL test..

X264

Basically this test encodes a HD video clip into a x264 video file. The first pass is very quick and the second one is much slower and much more demanding of a task as it does the actual encoding. This benchmark is heavily mult-threaded. 

 

Here is the chart of our results.

 

The end user can feel free to use his HDD for x264.

Game-related benchmarks

The synthetics

3DMark 11 and Vantage are useful tests to track changes within the same system and they are often used to give a rough comparison between platforms.

Vantage

First up we look at Vantage on the HDD using our GTX 670 and i7-3770K at stock speeds.  Looking carefully at each of the tests, all drives fall within a very small margin of error.

Here is the chart.

There is no difference running a SSD or a HDD for Vantage.

Now let’s look at 3D Mark 11.

3D Mark 11

Now lets check out the score with the same system:Here is the chart of our results:

There is no difference running a HDD or a SSD.  Let’s look at Heaven Benchmark and Crysis to see if there is any difference in frame rates between SSD and HDD.

Heaven 3.0 & Crysis framerates

We run Heaven 3.0 on all 3 of our drives at identical settings:

We compare identical runs and chart the result:

No difference.  We cannot substantiate Kingston’s claim that “Kingston’s HyperX SSD lets users load games and applications faster, increase frames per second (FPS)”.

Now we will go to a very practical test of something we all do, file copying.

File Copy: Crysis 2

In this test we are using MrK’s method of installing the Crysis Warhead game to the drive being benchmarked. The game folder is copied to another folder on the same drive using Microsoft’s Robocopy GUI and the time used is noted. This real world benchmark tests both the read and the write speeds of the drive at the same time. This time we choose Crysis 2 for this purpose as this game has 10GB of files of various sizes. This should test the hard disk transfer speeds across vast sizes of files and is indeed a real world scenario.

Here is the chart of the copy time reults in seconds.

 

The 128GB SDD took 2 minutes and 6 seconds on average to copy nearly 10GB. The HyperX 240GB SSDs only averaged 1 minute and 35 seconds while the HDD took 5 minute and 32 seconds.

Need we say more? Here we see a practical difference demonstrating the advantages of SSD and even the advantages of the faster HyperX SSD over the consumer grade Vnow 200 series.

We have already seen very slight improvements in video editing and multi-tasking when the drives are accessed and huge gains in copying big files.

Gaming Load times

Solid-state drives won’t increase game framerates but they can certainly reduce game startup times and save/load times. This means less time waiting for the game to load and more time playing the game. There is also the issue of “immersion”. If it takes a long time to load a level or an autosave, it may cause irritation, and getting back quickly into the game after your character dies is important for staying immersed in any game.

There is an incredible variation in game loading times between the HDD and SSDs, depending on the game engine used.  Some games bring you almost instantly back into the game, with very little difference between HDD and SSD.  The ones that take longer, tend to favor the SSD and load noticeably more quickly.  The differences between the two HyperX SSDs is imperceptable and there is less differences between the Vnow 200 SSD and the HyperX series than there is between the VNow Series and the HDD,

If you are into saving time, the SSD is definitely faster in loading PC levels and autosaves. The SSD will not improve your framerates – or your aim – but it may improve immersion by getting you back into the game a bit more quickly. And we also note that the 96GB SSD is a fraction quicker than the 128GB SSD.

 Benchmarking and testing overclocks

One thing that a reviewer or overclocker will appreciate is the ability to test hardware while pushing it to its limits, will often cause a display driver to stop responding or the operating system to crash.  Using a HDD takes quite a while to recover and return to testing compared to benching with a SSD.  This editor estimates that using a SSD over benching with a HDD for a major CPU or video card evaluation, saves twenty percent of his time!

Windows Startup and Shutdown

Now we come to what is arguably one of the most frustrating part of Windows – waiting for it to start-up or shutdown. For some of us, it is not important as we rarely start-up or shutdown our PCs. For others, it is a painful process to watch – while others of us do something else while our programs start-up or shut down.

The average shutdown time represents an “average range” for the test PC as there are so many variables when you shutdown your PC (installing updates will prolong the process).  From the chart, basically you are saving nearly half the time, on average, with a SSD over a HDD.

Startup on an SSD offers even more time-saving – you will spend one third of your time waiting for an SSD to load Win 7 compared to using a HDD .

How do you value your time? The charts speak for themselves again and power users will love this feature as no one wants to go make a cup of coffee while Windows sets up (we hope). Windows 8 may mititage this issue somewhat for HDD holdouts as it boots much faster than Windows 7.  Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

As we concluded last year, SSD technology is still one of the most rapidly improving while their price is dropping. With more and more motherboard manufacturers offering SATA 3 6Gb/s ports, the ceiling for maximum transfer speeds for disk drives has been nearly doubled from the SATA 2 3Gb/s standard. We have seen the SSD develop improved new controllers that bring faster speeds – especially with the HyperX Kingston drives.

We have watched SSD technology also get slowly cheaper over time and it is much more accessible to the regular consumer and not just for enthusiasts. Since last year’s Thailand floods which crippled HDD production, SSDs have reached the $1-per-gigabyte MSRP pricing regularly and sales frequently go well below this pricing once considered breakthrough.  The Kingston SSDNow V200 series offers a good bang-for-buck for consumers at regular pricing and for less than $95 you can have a fast 128GB drive.  At $210, the 256GB version offers a bit less bang-for-buck.

We have to say that we were completely impressed with the HyperX 3K SSD.  At $175, it is just as fast as the premium $412 HyperX SSD and $35 cheaper than the slightly higher capacity Vnow 200 drive – 240GB vs. 256GB.  Unless you are capacity constrained and the extra 16GB makes a difference, we would recommend the HyperX 3K SSD.

It is absolutely not “mandatory” to have a SSD if you use your PC only for gaming. A hardcore gamer would more likely save his money by buying a large fast mechanical drive and upgrading his graphics instead.  A 1TB drive can again be had for $50 on sale.  Mechanical HDDs have got quite fast for gaming and their only disadvantage compared to the SSD is waiting a second or two longer for your autosave to load; or longer for an entire level to load. However, if a gamer is impatient and wants to get right back into the game, then the SSD will definitely improve immersion and decrease frustration.

It is a matter of valuing ones time compared to what one spends on a relatively small-capacity drive; one has to choose their games and applications to put on the SSD wisely – Less than 80GB after an OS installation with a 96GB SSD or 119GB for a 128GB drive is not a lot of space and you can only have a few modern games on your SSD at any one time.

With a low-capicity drive SSD , gamers will constantly be installing new games and uninstalling them after playing them to make room for even newer games.  At 240GB to 256GB, many gamers will be satisfied with the amount of storage and it is a good compromise size for a budget conscious gamer with $200 to spend on an SSD.

Pros –

• The SSD is of a magnitude faster generally than the mechanical hard drive in almost every way. Windows startup is blazing fast and shutdown is noticeably quicker!
• Kingston’s SSDNow V200 128GB drive has improved over the previous V100 series and it is good bang for buck at $99 for 128GB for a standalone drive
• Kingston’s HyperX 3K SSD has awesome bang-for-buck at Amazon’s current price of $175 for 240GB of really fast HyperX performance.  There is no performance disadvantage picking the 3K NAND to save well over $200 off the regular 240GB HyperX SSD’s price.
• TRIM support and garbage collection keeps your drive “like new”.  The HyperX SSDs also offer advanced wear-leveling technology, S.M.A.R.T. tools and DuraClass Technology.
• Excellent bundle for notebook or desktop in a single package makes setting up your SSD a breeze and less complex than choosing the bundle for the 128GB (non +) series.  Standalone offers a good option.
• 3-year warranty and superb Kingston support stand it out from the “SSD crowd”

Cons –

• Price per GB is still high compared to mechanical hard drives.
• Limited storage compared to HDDs
• 128GB is too small for a hardcore gamer; 240-256GB makes a difference to a gamer

The 240GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD deserves the ABT Great Value award. It is a good drive for gamers because of its reasonable 240GB capacity, there is plenty of room for Windows, applications and perhaps ten or more of your favorite games. It is also highly recommended as a time and frustration saver in starting up and shutting down Windows and for anything to do with file access, copying, or loading game levels.

We did not set out especially to evaluate our 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drives. However, they continue to performe admirably and demonstrate improvements in every way over our older 7200.10 drives. We even filled our drives to capacity as we tested over 80 games for our original 3D Vision evaluation, and they still perform as they did over a year ago when they were less than half-filled!  They are awesome for storage and we will probably upgrade them to 1TB drives.

It pays in every way to keep up with ABT and the best way is to follow us is on ABT forum.

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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«1. Introduction 2. Package Contents & Unboxing3. Test System & Benchmarks4. The Benchmark Suites 5. More Tests6. Gaming-related benches 7. Win 7 Startup & Shutdown 8. The Tests 9. Conclusion 10. View All»