{"id":32755,"date":"2012-12-10T20:25:58","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T20:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=32755"},"modified":"2013-08-02T16:34:53","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T15:34:53","slug":"kingstons-new-vnow-300-120gb-ssd-comes-close-to-hyperx-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/kingstons-new-vnow-300-120gb-ssd-comes-close-to-hyperx-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingston&#8217;s New SSDNow V300 120GB SSD comes close to HyperX performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"left\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ < ![CDATA[\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-7021221536180758\"; \/* 468x60, created 11\/11\/09 *\/ google_ad_slot = \"1949837292\"; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\/\/ < ![CDATA[\n\n\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This SSD evaluation is going to focus on advantages for gamers with\u00a0Kingston&#8217;s new budget-oriented consumer SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300\u00a0as it compares to their last generation V200\u00a0series\u00a0and even to their more expensive enthusiast-grade\u00a0HyperX 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 have found performance increases.\u00a0 This time promises even greater improvements as\u00a0it is the first time that Kingston is using a custom\u00a0LSI\u00a0SandForce controller and new Toshiba memory for its SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 series.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Box-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Box-1.jpg?resize=346%2C391\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This is ABT&#8217;s sixth SSD evaluation and we are now going to continue to look at the performance differences within the Kingston SSD lineup\u00a0while focusing on the new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 120GB SSD.\u00a0 Just as with the <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=32503\">last SSD evaluation<\/a> less than a month ago, our test bed uses Ivy Bridge, Intel&#8217;s latest consumer and enthusiast platform, a mechanical 500GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, two HyperX SSDs and a SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 SSD. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32823\" title=\"3ssds-1hdd\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3ssds-1hdd.jpg?resize=384%2C327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3ssds-1hdd.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3ssds-1hdd-300x255.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>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 once again test the differences between this new V300\u00a0drive and our other drives pictured above.\u00a0Kingston offers two basic consumer lines &#8211; their Kingston HyperX SSD for the enthusiast who wants extreme performance, and their V<em>Now<\/em> lineup which offers more budget-oriented performance. We will be evaluating the 120GB version of\u00a0Kingston&#8217;s latest SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 (SV200S37A\/128G).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pricing and\u00a0Performance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All of these drives differ from each other in price and in capabilities &#8211; you will pay approximately $100 for a 120\/128GB\u00a0Kingston SSD and\u00a0$200 to $400 for 240GB to 256GB Kingston drive. The standalone version of this new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 120GB\u00a0drive is at time of writing,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721107\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721107', '$109.99 at Newegg.com with free shipping']);\" >$109.99 at Newegg.com with free shipping<\/a>.\u00a0 The notebook version of the desktop bundle that we received from Kingston <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721113\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721113', 'is\u00a0ten dollars more']);\" >is\u00a0ten dollars more<\/a>\u00a0but we couldn&#8217;t find the desktop version of the bundle as it is still quite new.<\/p>\n<p>The stand-alone version of the Kingston SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 128GB SSD (SV200S37A\/128G) as we received it from Kingston, can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-SSDNow-2-5-Inch-Solid-State\/dp\/B0062IMAQ6\/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352050796&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=SV200S37A%2F128G\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-SSDNow-2-5-Inch-Solid-State\/dp\/B0062IMAQ6\/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352050796&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=SV200S37A%2F128G', 'Amazon for $94.75']);\" >Amazon for $94.75<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-SSDNow-2-5-Inch-Solid-State\/dp\/B0062IMAQ6\/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352050796&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=SV200S37A%2F128G\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-SSDNow-2-5-Inch-Solid-State\/dp\/B0062IMAQ6\/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352050796&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=SV200S37A%2F128G', '256GB version is $200.98']);\" >256GB version is $200.98<\/a>.\u00a0 Moving up in performance over the SSD<em>now<\/em> V200 series, the 240 GB HyperX 3K SSD costs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-HyperX-2-5-Inch-SH103S3-240G\/dp\/B007R67FTY\/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352053339&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=kingston+hyperX+ssd\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-HyperX-2-5-Inch-SH103S3-240G\/dp\/B007R67FTY\/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352053339&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=kingston+hyperX+ssd', '$179.99 at Amazon']);\" >$179.99 at Amazon<\/a>\u00a0which we found to be quite a bargain in our evaluation and was recommended by us.<\/p>\n<p>The 240GB HyperX SSD is Kingston&#8217;s fastest SSD and it costs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-SandForce-Technology-SH100S3B-240G\/dp\/B005C95NCY\/ref=sr_1_8?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352053339&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=kingston+hyperX+ssd\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Kingston-SandForce-Technology-SH100S3B-240G\/dp\/B005C95NCY\/ref=sr_1_8?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352053339&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=kingston+hyperX+ssd', '$408.211 at Amazon.']);\" >$408.211 at Amazon.<\/a> Both of the HyperX SSDs include Kington&#8217;s &#8220;upgrade kit&#8221; &#8211; bascally the same as the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300\u00a0desktop bundle kit sans screwdriver &#8211;\u00a0which 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.<\/p>\n<p>Kingston SSD<em>s<\/em> 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\u2019t feature TRIM, and it will also help organizations extend the software cycle on their systems, delaying upgrades of operating systems and compatible applications.<\/p>\n<p>The features and benefits of the SSDNow series extend to all Kingston SSDs. Two\u00a0major benefits should be noted especially for notebooks &#8211; power savings and durability. A SSD uses significantly less battery power than a HDD and is also less prone to failure from dropping it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Kington&#8217;s SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32818\" title=\"ssd-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-1.jpg?resize=432%2C268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-1.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-1-300x186.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingston.com\/us\/ssd\/v#sv300s3\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.kingston.com\/us\/ssd\/v#sv300s3', 'Kingston&#8217;s site']);\" >Kingston&#8217;s site<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Kingston\u2019s SSDNow V300 solid-state drive is a cost-effective way to revive your computer. It\u2019s 10x faster than a hard drive plus more reliable, more durable and shock-proof. It features an LSI\u00ae SandForce\u00ae controller customized for Kingston and best-in-class components, and is available in kits with all the accessories needed for an effortless transition to the latest technology. For added peace of mind, it\u2019s backed by a three-year warranty, free technical support and legendary Kingston\u00ae reliability.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB Features and Specifications:<\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Features\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Fast<\/strong> \u2014 10x faster than a 7200RPM hard drive<\/li>\n<li><strong>High Quality<\/strong> \u2014 features an LSI\u00ae SandForce\u00ae controller customized for Kingston<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reliable<\/strong> \u2014 with no moving parts, solid-state drives are less likely to fail than standard hard drives<\/li>\n<li><strong>Economical<\/strong> design optimized to make migrating to an SSD more affordable<\/li>\n<li><strong>Convenient<\/strong> \u2014 all-in-one kits with all the components for easy installation<\/li>\n<li><strong>Multiple capacities<\/strong> \u2014 to fit your workload<\/li>\n<li><strong>Guaranteed<\/strong> \u2014 three-year warranty, free technical support and legendary Kingston reliability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<p>\u00a0<strong>Specifications\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<p><strong>Form factor<\/strong>:\u00a0 2.5&#8243;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Interface<\/strong>: SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb\/s) \u2013 with backwards compatibility to SATA Rev. 2.0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"specs_expand_pnl1\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<p><strong>Capacities<\/strong>: 60GB, 120GB, 240GB<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sequential Reads<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>SATA Rev. 3.0 up to: 450MB\/s<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sequential Writes<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>SATA Rev. 3.0 up to: 450MB\/s<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maximum Random 4k Read\/Write<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>60GB \u2014 up to 85,000\/ up to 60,000 IOPS<\/p>\n<p>120GB \u2014 up to 85,000 \/ up to 55,000 IOPS<\/p>\n<p>240GB \u2014 up to 85,000 \/ up to 43,000 IOPS<\/p>\n<p><strong>PCMARK\u00ae Vantage HDD Suite Score<\/strong>: 60GB: 39,000 120GB: 49,000 240GB: 57,000<\/p>\n<p><strong>Power Consumption<\/strong>: 0.640W Idle \/ 1.423 W Read \/ 2.052 W Write<\/p>\n<p><strong>Storage temperatures<\/strong>: -40 to 85\u00b0C<\/p>\n<p><strong>Operating temperatures<\/strong>: 0 to 70\u00b0C<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dimensions<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>69.8mm x 100.1mm x 7mm<\/p>\n<p><strong>Weight<\/strong>: 86g<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vibration operating<\/strong>: 2.17G Peak (7\u2013800Hz)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vibration non-operating<\/strong>: 20G Peak (10\u20132000Hz)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Life expectancy<\/strong>: 1 million hours MTBF<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Warranty\/support<\/strong>: three-year warranty with free technical support<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>New controller and memory in V3oo<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The 120GB SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 is a 100% Kingston-branded solid-state drive\u00a0which is their first product using the new Toshiba 19nm NAND flash memory process.\u00a0 In addition, this new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 uses\u00a0a custom SandForce LSI controller which supports the SATA 6.0GB\/s specification. Specifically, the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 uses the SandForce SF-2281 flash storage processor and 16 modules of Toshiba\u2019s 19nm 8GB MLC Toggle Mode NAND flash memory.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">There is actually 128GB of total NAND flash memory (16x8GB) but\u00a08GB are reserved for over-provisioning.\u00a0 Once formatted, this 120GB advertised capacity drive has about 112GB of actually available capacity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300<em><\/em> line with the (now) older V200 series and the current and more expensive HyperX 3K and HyperX SSDs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Since our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=32503\">last SSD evaluation in November<\/a>, we have upgraded all of our results with Sisoft&#8217;s Sandra 2013 from the 2012 version and we have added three new benchmarks with the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 versus the mechanical Seagate Hard Disk Drive (HDD) that will particularly interest gamers &#8211; (1) <em>Crysis<\/em> game level load times, (2)the\u00a0time to install GeForce 306.97 drivers, and (3)\u00a0the\u00a0time to unpack for installation, 15.3GB of <em>Assassin&#8217;s Creed 3&#8217;s<\/em> .rar files. This may give us a practical reason for upgrading to a SSD over a HDD &#8211; or not.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Let&#8217;s open the box.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><\/h3>\n<p><!--pagetitle:Introduction --><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Unboxing &amp; Bundles --><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Unboxing<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32813\" title=\"Box-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Box-1.jpg?resize=480%2C543\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Box-1.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Box-1-265x300.jpg 265w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>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<em>Now<\/em> V300 is rather tough anyway and Kingston even had a <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=21112\">contest<\/a> to show how durable they are.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32817\" title=\"packed\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/packed.jpg?resize=480%2C349\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/packed.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/packed-300x218.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Box-obv.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Box-obv\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Box-obv.jpg?resize=480%2C464\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here are the contents: the 2.5&#8243; SSD, the SATA data cable, the SATA power cable, the case and the cloning software CD.\u00a0 One new thing that we really like is that Kingston now includes an installation DVD.\u00a0 We believe that every manufacturer should follow their example and there would be less issues with installation and less tech support calls.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32816\" title=\"bundle\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle.jpg?resize=491%2C412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle-1024x859.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle-300x251.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle.jpg 1230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 491px) 100vw, 491px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32819\" title=\"ssd-2\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-2.jpg?resize=384%2C297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-2.jpg 600w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-2-300x232.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>This is the\u00a0SSD&#8217;s other side and we see the standard connections.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32821\" title=\"ssd-obv-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-obv-1.jpg?resize=384%2C315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-obv-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ssd-obv-1-300x246.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The physical look and dimensions of\u00a0all SSDs are the same except for their thickness (7mm for notebook and 9mm for desktop)\u00a0and our SSDs all have the standard SATA power and data connectors.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Differences between Kingston&#8217;s desktop bundle, notebook bundle and stand alone units<\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/TheKit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-32829\" title=\"TheKit\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/TheKit.jpg?resize=300%2C180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/TheKit-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/TheKit.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>The more deluxe and enthusiast-oriented HyperX Series notebook bundle (above) includes a screwdriver and a case to use the drive externally which makes it slightly different than the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 Series desktop bundle (below) which includes rails and a power connector to mount it into a PC case. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-32816\" title=\"bundle\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle.jpg?resize=300%2C251\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle-300x251.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle-1024x859.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bundle.jpg 1230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>With\u00a0the desktop or notebook\u00a0bundles, Kingston includes the Acronis 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In contrast, the standalone Kingston 128GB SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 arrives in a blister pack (below) with no hardware nor cloning software. Unless you already have a bundle, the extra ten dollars for the kit is well worth it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Vnow-pack.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Vnow-pack\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Vnow-pack.jpg?resize=384%2C546\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Testing the SSDs versus the HDD<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Below is Thermaltake&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=23961\">the review<\/a> 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 and for cloning drives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/HDD-SSD-dock.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32442\" title=\"HDD-SSD-dock\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/HDD-SSD-dock.jpg?resize=350%2C496\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/HDD-SSD-dock.jpg 350w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/HDD-SSD-dock-211x300.jpg 211w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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\u00a04 SSDs, the one with the smallest capacity being 120GB. We made sure to leave room for additional files and applications to its maximum of about 112GB.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We used the supplied Acronis cloning software on the Kingston-supplied CD to make a exact copy of our HDD to all\u00a0four 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&#8217;s recap the SSD and what makes it unique from mechanical drives.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>SSD Recap<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=19868&amp;all=1\">article<\/a> on the previous series of Kingston SSD<em>Now<\/em> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=15999&amp;all=1\">Patriot TorqX 256 GB SSD<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Secure Erase and Performance Degradation<\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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&#8217;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&#8217;s SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 or HyperX series, there is simply no need to secure erase periodically, but whenever you format or re-image your drive, it&#8217;s a great idea.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.markc.me.uk\/MarkC\/Blog\/Entries\/2009\/8\/13_Erasing_an_SSD.html\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.markc.me.uk\/MarkC\/Blog\/Entries\/2009\/8\/13_Erasing_an_SSD.html', 'This']);\" >This<\/a> is perhaps the most detailed yet simplified step-by-step way to secure erase your SSD &#8211; something you must do (for safety) if you ever sell it. Be aware that your SSD&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Let&#8217;s check out our test bed.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Test Configuration &amp; Benchmarks --><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Test Configuration &#8211; Hardware<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Core i7-3770K (reference 3.5GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost are on), supplied by Intel.<\/li>\n<li>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)<\/li>\n<li>ECS Z77H2-A2X motherboard (Intel z77 chipset, shipping BIOS, USB\/PCIe 3.0 specification; CrossFire\/SLI 8x+8x)<\/li>\n<li>Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-DH3 Series 7 mATX motherboard (shipping BIOS, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0 specification, CrossFire\/SLI 8x+8x)<\/li>\n<li>8 GB Kingston DDR3 PC 1866 Kingston RAM (2\u00d72, 3&#215;2 and 4&#215;2 GB, dual- and tri-channel at 1833MHz; supplied by Kingston)<\/li>\n<li>GeForce GTX 670, 2 GB (reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia<\/li>\n<li>500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives<\/li>\n<li>Kingston V<em>Now<\/em> 300 SSD, 120 GB,\u00a0retail desktop upgrade\u00a0drive, supplied by Kington<\/li>\n<li>Kingston HyperX SSD 240 GB, retail desktop upgrade kit, supplied by Kingston<\/li>\n<li>Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, 240GB, retail desktop upgrade kit, supplied by Kingston<\/li>\n<li>Kingston Vn<em>ow<\/em> 200 SSD, 128 GB, standalone drive, supplied by Kington<\/li>\n<li>Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake<\/li>\n<li>Thermaltake Overseer RX-I supplied by Thermaltake<\/li>\n<li>Thermaltake Water2.0 Pro watercooler supplied by Thermaltake<\/li>\n<li>Philips DVD SATA writer\/Sony DVD SATA writer<\/li>\n<li>HP LP3065 2560&#215;1600 thirty inch LCD<\/li>\n<li>ASUS VG278 1920&#215;1080 120Hz 3D Vision 2 ready 27&#8243; display supplied by ASUS\/Nvidia<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Test Configuration &#8211; Software<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>GeForce WHQL 306.97 drivers<\/li>\n<li>Latest drivers for Series 7 motherboards.<\/li>\n<li>Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates<\/li>\n<li>Latest DirectX<\/li>\n<li>All games are patched to their latest versions.<\/li>\n<li>VSync is off in the control panel.<\/li>\n<li>Varying AA enabled as noted in games<em><\/em>; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied if possible; 16xAF forced in control panel for <em>Crysis.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>All results show average rates as noted.<\/li>\n<li>Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>The benchmarks<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>The Game benchmarks<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Heaven 3.0<em><\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Crysis<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Other Tests<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Super Pi<\/li>\n<li>Fritz Chess Bench<\/li>\n<li>Custom PC Benchmark<\/li>\n<li>Cinebench<\/li>\n<li>x264 HD<\/li>\n<li>Crystal Disk Mark<\/li>\n<li>AS SSD<\/li>\n<li>ATTO2.34<\/li>\n<li><em>Crysis 2<\/em> folder copy<\/li>\n<li>HD Tach 3.0.4<\/li>\n<li>HD Tune 2.55<\/li>\n<li>Windows startup &amp; shutdown<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Synthetic Benching Suites<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>SiSoft Sandra 2013<\/li>\n<li>PC Mark Vantage &#8211; HDD tests<\/li>\n<li>PC Mark 7<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Vantage<\/li>\n<li>3DMark11<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>New Benchmarks<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Crysis<\/em> Game Level Load time<\/li>\n<li>Install GeForce 306.97 video drivers time<\/li>\n<li>Unpack 15.3GB <em>Assassin&#8217;s Creed III<\/em> .rar files for installation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We have got an interesting project going. First we look at synthetic and real world benches before we head for gaming results.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Synthetic Tests --><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Synthetic Tests<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>CrystalDiskMark<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Crystal DiskMark version 3.0 is an excellent way to test your motherboard\/HD&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here are two key features of \u201cCrystalDiskMark\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">\u00b7 Sequential reads\/writes<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">\u00b7 Random 4KB\/512KB reads\/writes<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-mark1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32830\" title=\"Crystal-disk-mark\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-mark1.jpg?resize=425%2C365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-mark1.jpg 425w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-mark1-300x257.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 425px) 100vw, 425px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">And now we put the sequential read\/write information into a comparison chart:<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-markCHART.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32831\" title=\"Crystal-disk-markCHART\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-markCHART.jpg?resize=482%2C411\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-markCHART.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Crystal-disk-markCHART-300x255.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">All of\u00a0the SSDs leave the HDD far behind in this benchmark. The SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 is slower in this test than the HyperX enthusiast SSDs overall whereas the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 is the very fastest in Read speeds but slower than V200 in Writes.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>HD TACH<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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:<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32832\" title=\"hdtach\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach.jpg?resize=480%2C349\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach-300x218.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">From looking at the chart, what is impressive is the performance in HD Tach of our HDD. First we look the HDD&#8217;s sequential read speed test is graphed along with the random access time and CPU utilization &#8211; 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 &#8211; average read is 223.5 MB\/s.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32833\" title=\"hdtach-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtach-chart-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 scores surprisingly weak compared to the HDD in this test. In contrast, both HyperX SSDs score far higher and the new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 120GB hangs right\u00a0in\u00a0with them.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>HD Tune 2.55<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">HD Tune is a hard disk utility. We are using the default setting of 64KB blocks for testing.\u00a0 We run the standard benchmark with all of our five drives.<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32834\" title=\"hdtune\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune.jpg?resize=480%2C390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune.jpg 480w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune-300x243.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Now the chart.<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32835\" title=\"hdtune-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C372\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/hdtune-chart-300x231.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200&#8217;s transfer rate performance in this test whereas the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300&#8217;s rate is quite respectable even compared to the much more expensive Hyper-X drives.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>ASSD<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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.<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32836\" title=\"assd\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd.jpg?resize=480%2C483\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd.jpg 480w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd-298x300.jpg 298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the chart comparing the scores:<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32837\" title=\"assd-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/assd-chart-300x223.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 and V300.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>ATTO<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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.\u00a0 Here is the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300\u00a0 SSD&#8217;s results:<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Atto-v3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32838\" title=\"Atto-v3\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Atto-v3.jpg?resize=482%2C621\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Atto-v3.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Atto-v3-232x300.jpg 232w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>We are way ahead of Kingston&#8217;s published conservative figures of 450MB\/s for Read and Write!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Here are the results of the HDD benchmark.\u00a0 <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ATTO-hdd\" alt=\"ATTO hdd Kingstons HyperX and VNow 200 SSDs turn up the heat on the Hard Disk Drive\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ATTO-hdd.jpg?resize=480%2C614\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\">\u00a0Here is the results of the ATTO Disk benchmark results for our 128GB V<em>Now <\/em>200 SSD:<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ATTO-vnow\" alt=\"ATTO vnow Kingstons HyperX and VNow 200 SSDs turn up the heat on the Hard Disk Drive\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ATTO-vnow.jpg?resize=480%2C618\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>\u00a0V200 is quite a bit slower than the V3oo but still faster than the HDD.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the Hyper3K SSD<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ATTO-Hyx3K\" alt=\"ATTO Hyx3K Kingstons HyperX and VNow 200 SSDs turn up the heat on the Hard Disk Drive\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ATTO-Hyx3K.jpg?resize=480%2C606\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/> And finally, here is the HyperX SSD results:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ATTO-hyperX.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ATTO-hyperX\" alt=\"ATTO hyperX Kingstons HyperX and VNow 200 SSDs turn up the heat on the Hard Disk Drive\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ATTO-hyperX.jpg?resize=480%2C618\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It doesn&#8217;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 until the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 series where the\u00a0consumer-grade SSD comes close to the HyperX enthusiast SSDs in performance.\u00a0In 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.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Benchmark Suites --><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>PCMark Vantage<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<li>HDD 1- Windows Defender<\/li>\n<li>HDD 2- Game HDD<\/li>\n<li>HDD 3- Importing pictures<\/li>\n<li>HDD 4- Windows Vista start-up<\/li>\n<li>HDD 5- Video editing<\/li>\n<li>HDD 6- Media Center<\/li>\n<li>HDD 7- Adding music to Windows Media Player<\/li>\n<li>HDD 8- Application loading<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">First we run the standard PCMark Vantage benchmark suite using our\u00a0new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 SSD:.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-overall.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32840\" title=\"pc-markvantage-overall\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-overall.jpg?resize=410%2C1256\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-overall.jpg 410w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-overall-334x1024.jpg 334w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Now we run the same benchmark suite with our Kingston SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 but we pay particular attention to the drive scores.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32841\" title=\"pc-markvantage-hdd-details\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-hdd-details.jpg?resize=414%2C612\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-hdd-details.jpg 414w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-markvantage-hdd-details-202x300.jpg 202w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>If you want to compare these detailed scores with the HDD and the other Kingston SSDs, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=32503&amp;page=5\">our last evaluation<\/a> which uses exactly the same test bed and conditions.\u00a0 Here are the overall scores expressed in a chart:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/PCmarkVantage-CHART.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32842\" title=\"PCmarkVantage-CHART\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/PCmarkVantage-CHART.jpg?resize=482%2C412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/PCmarkVantage-CHART.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/PCmarkVantage-CHART-300x256.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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 older SSD V<em>Now<\/em> 200 series but not the new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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\u00a0the differences between SSD performance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>PC Mark 7<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">PCMark 7 is Futuremark&#8217;s updated verion of our last benchmark suite but for Windows 7. <a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32843\" title=\"pc-mark-7\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7.jpg?resize=392%2C1183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7.jpg 392w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7-99x300.jpg 99w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7-339x1024.jpg 339w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 392px) 100vw, 392px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>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.<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7-CHART.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32844\" title=\"pc-mark-7-CHART\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7-CHART.jpg?resize=482%2C390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7-CHART.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/pc-mark-7-CHART-300x242.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ffff00;\">SANDRA 2013 <\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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. <a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-overall.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32845\" title=\"Sandra2013-overall\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-overall.jpg?resize=480%2C506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-overall.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-overall-284x300.jpg 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Although we used the last verson of 2012 in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=32503&amp;all=1\">last SSD evaluation<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sisoftware.co.uk\/?d=&amp;f=home&amp;l=en&amp;a=\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.sisoftware.co.uk\/?d=&amp;f=home&amp;l=en&amp;a=', 'SANDRA 2013']);\" >SANDRA 2013<\/a> came out last\u00a0month and we have updated all of our SSD benchmarks for this current SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 evaluation.\u00a0\u00a0Sandra 2012&#8217;s overall benchmark\u00a0score is generally higher than the overall Sandra 2013 score.\u00a0We find\u00a0Sandra 2013 is an incredibly useful suite which we use regularly as a diagnostic utility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here is a summary chart of SANDRA 2013&#8217;s benchmarks:<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-Chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32846\" title=\"Sandra2013-Chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-Chart.jpg?resize=539%2C341\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-Chart.jpg 539w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Sandra2013-Chart-300x189.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 539px) 100vw, 539px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">As usual,\u00a0all 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 although the HyperX SSDs are faster than the V<em>Now<\/em> 200 series the performance gap is nearly closed by the new Kingston V<em>Now<\/em> 300 series. Let&#8217;s head for real world testing<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:More Tests --><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>More Testing<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>CustomPC Benchmark<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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\u2019s 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.<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32847\" title=\"CustomPC-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-1.jpg?resize=507%2C492\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-1.jpg 507w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-1-300x291.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 507px) 100vw, 507px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The tests are:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<li><em>GIMP Image Editing<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>H.264 Video Encoding<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Multi-tasking<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here are the results expressed in a chart:<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32848\" title=\"CustomPC-DetailChart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-DetailChart.jpg?resize=482%2C606\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-DetailChart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CustomPC-DetailChart-238x300.jpg 238w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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, the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 has caught up with the HyperX SSDs.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Super Pi<\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32849\" title=\"Super-pi\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi.jpg?resize=480%2C566\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi.jpg 480w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi-254x300.jpg 254w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Let&#8217;s compare the speed of the drives to see if there is any difference.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi-CHART.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32850\" title=\"Super-pi-CHART\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi-CHART.jpg?resize=482%2C368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi-CHART.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Super-pi-CHART-300x229.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">No difference really. Please continue on to Fritz Chess Bench.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Fritz Chess Bench<\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Fritz Chess Benchmark is found within the game\u2019s program files and basically it crunches numbers to test your processor\u2019s speed. Deep Fritz takes advantage of massive calculations and multi-threaded performance to work any CPU fully. It loads all threads 100%.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32851\" title=\"FRITZ\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ.jpg?resize=454%2C474\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ.jpg 454w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ-287x300.jpg 287w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 454px) 100vw, 454px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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. <a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32852\" title=\"FRITZ-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C367\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/FRITZ-chart-300x228.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The HDD makes no practical difference.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">CINEBENCH<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maxon.net\/downloads\/cinebench.html\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.maxon.net']); _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.maxon.net\/downloads\/cinebench.html', 'CINEBENCH']);\">CINEBENCH<\/a> is based on MAXON\u2019s professional 3D content creation suite, CINEMA 4D. This latest 11.5 version of CINEBENCH can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically.<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32854\" title=\"cinebench\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench.jpg?resize=461%2C563\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench.jpg 512w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench-245x300.jpg 245w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 461px) 100vw, 461px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Now we run the benchmarks and chart our results:<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32855\" title=\"cinebench-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C629\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cinebench-chart-229x300.jpg 229w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Of course, there is no difference in the CPU test and only slight variation in the OpenGL test.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">X264<\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 multi-threaded.<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32856\" title=\"x264\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264.jpg?resize=480%2C781\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264-184x300.jpg 184w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264-629x1024.jpg 629w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the chart of our results.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32857\" title=\"x264-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C517\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/x264-chart-279x300.jpg 279w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The end user can feel free to use his HDD for x264.\u00a0 Generally a lot of storage is needed anyway.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Game Related Benches --><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Game-related benchmarks<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>The synthetics<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Vantage<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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.<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32858\" title=\"3dMarkVantage\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage.jpg?resize=480%2C278\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage-300x174.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the chart.<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32859\" title=\"3dMarkVantage-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C356\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dMarkVantage-chart-300x221.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">There is no difference running a SSD or a HDD for Vantage.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Now let\u2019s look at 3D Mark 11.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>3D Mark 11<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Now lets check out the score with the SSDNow 300 SSD:<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dmark11.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32860\" title=\"3dmark11\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dmark11.jpg?resize=300%2C728\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the chart of our results:<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dmark11-chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32861\" title=\"3dmark11-chart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dmark11-chart.jpg?resize=482%2C364\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dmark11-chart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/3dmark11-chart-300x226.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">There is no difference running a HDD or a SSD. Let\u2019s look at Heaven Benchmark and <em>Crysis<\/em> to see if there is any difference in frame rates between SSD and HDD.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Heaven 3.0 &amp; Crysis framerates<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We run <em>Crysis<\/em> at 1920&#215;1080 on Very High setting with 4xAA\/16xAF.\u00a0 Heaven 3.0 is run as below on all\u00a05 of our drives.\u00a0\u00a0 Everything is at identical settings under the same conditions:<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/heaven-vnow.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-32519\" title=\"heaven-vnow\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/heaven-vnow.jpg?resize=300%2C168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/heaven-vnow-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/heaven-vnow-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/heaven-vnow.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We compare identical runs and chart the result:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysis-heaven-cht.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32862\" title=\"crysis-heaven-cht\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysis-heaven-cht.jpg?resize=482%2C529\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysis-heaven-cht.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysis-heaven-cht-273x300.jpg 273w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">No\u00a0difference outside of benchmarking &#8220;noise&#8221;. We cannot substantiate the second part of Kingston&#8217;s claim that &#8220;<em>Kingston\u2019s HyperX SSD lets users load games and applications faster, increase frames per second (FPS)&#8221;.\u00a0 <\/em>We do not find any difference in the frame rates.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Now we will\u00a0look at\u00a0three new very practical tests for gamers.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:3 New Gamer's benches &amp; Win 7 Startup &amp; Shutdown --><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>3 New Benchmarks<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Three of the following\u00a0four benchmarks are new since the last ABT\u00a0SSD vs. HDD evaluation, last month.\u00a0 Besides updating to Sandra 2013, we also added three benchmarks that regularly affect every gamer in a practical way.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>File Copy: Crysis 2<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In this test, we are using <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=15999&amp;page=12\">MrK&#8217;s method<\/a> of installing the <em>Crysis Warhead<\/em> game to the drive being benchmarked. The game folder is copied to another folder on the same drive using Microsoft\u2019s 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 <em>Crysis 2<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the chart of the copy time reults in seconds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CrysisfoldercopyChart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32863\" title=\"CrysisfoldercopyChart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CrysisfoldercopyChart.jpg?resize=482%2C399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CrysisfoldercopyChart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CrysisfoldercopyChart-300x248.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 took 2 minutes and 6 seconds on average to copy nearly 10GB. The HyperX 240GB SSDs only averaged 1 minute and 35 seconds and the new SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 only took ten seconds longer; a significant improvement over the older series.\u00a0 And\u00a0the HDD took 5 minute and 32 seconds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 older consumer grade V<em>Now<\/em> 200 series, but far less with the V<em>Now<\/em> 300 SSD.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Game Level\u00a0Load Times <\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Solid-state drives won\u2019t 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 &#8220;immersion&#8221;. 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">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\u00a0the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300\u00a0has got faster than the\u00a0SSD<em>Now<\/em> V200 drives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Here is a new benchmark for us since our last evaluation.\u00a0 To represent loading a level in <em>Crysis<\/em>, we time the average length of time it takes to load\u00a0the GPU benchmark after the first time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysislevelloadchart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32864\" title=\"crysislevelloadchart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysislevelloadchart.jpg?resize=482%2C290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysislevelloadchart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/crysislevelloadchart-300x180.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">If you are into saving time, the SSD is definitely faster in loading PC levels and autosaves. The SSD will not improve your framerates &#8211; or your aim &#8211; but it may improve immersion by getting you back into the game a bit more quickly.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Installing Video Drivers<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">A gamer often installs WHQL drivers as soon as they are available.\u00a0 Beta drivers may be released weekly and installing drivers for a video card is a common task.\u00a0 This is also a new benchmark for us.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\">Here is the chart showing the time difference in installing downloaded drivers from a HDD versus on a SSD.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/videodriverchart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32865\" title=\"videodriverchart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/videodriverchart.jpg?resize=482%2C290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/videodriverchart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/videodriverchart-300x180.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It takes nearly twice as long to install video card drivers from a HDD than it does from the SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 drive.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Installing a game from downloaded compressed files.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">As the world moves to digital downloads as the preferred method for installing games, the importance of a fast drive in saving time becomes more important.\u00a0 We recently downloaded <em>Assassin&#8217;s Creed III<\/em> and installed it to our drive which reminded us to make it a new benchmark.\u00a0 After you download all 15.3GB in .rar files, they must be uncompressed to install the game.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/15.3GB-AssassinsCreed-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32866\" title=\"15.3GB-AssassinsCreed-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/15.3GB-AssassinsCreed-1.jpg?resize=480%2C409\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/15.3GB-AssassinsCreed-1.jpg 800w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/15.3GB-AssassinsCreed-1-300x255.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Let&#8217;s see how long it takes to uncompress over 15GB of files.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ac3installchart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32867\" title=\"ac3installchart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ac3installchart.jpg?resize=482%2C290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ac3installchart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ac3installchart-300x180.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a> There is no contest as the SSD is more than twice faster.\u00a0 Again we ask, how do you value your time?<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Benchmarking and testing overclocks<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">One thing that a reviewer or overclocker will\u00a0note is\u00a0while\u00a0pushing\u00a0hardware to its limits, it 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!<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Windows Startup and Shutdown<\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Now we come to what is arguably one of the most frustrating part of Windows &#8211; 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 &#8211; while others of us do something else while our programs start-up or shut down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The average shutdown time represents an &#8220;average range&#8221; 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.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-32868\" title=\"win7startsutchart\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/win7startsutchart.jpg?resize=482%2C549\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/win7startsutchart.jpg 482w, https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/win7startsutchart-263x300.jpg 263w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Startup on an SSD offers even more time-saving &#8211; you will spend one third of your time waiting for an SSD to load Win 7 compared to using a HDD .<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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. Windows 8 mitiages this issue somewhat for HDD holdouts as it boots much faster than Windows 7. Let&#8217;s head for our conclusion.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Conclusion --><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 &#8211; especially beginning with the enthusiast HyperX Kingston drives and now migrating to the consumer SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 drive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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&#8217;s Thailand floods which crippled HDD production, SSDs have\u00a0dipped below\u00a0the $1-per-gigabyte MSRP pricing regularly and sales frequently go well below this pricing once considered breakthrough. The Kingston SSD<em>Now <\/em>V300 series offers a great bang-for-buck for consumers at regular pricing and for less than $110 you can have a fast 120GB drive that comes very close to the HyperX SSDs in performance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>It is absolutely not &#8220;mandatory&#8221; to have a SSD if you use your PC only for gaming.<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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 &#8211; Less than 80GB after an OS installation with a 96GB SSD or 119GB for a 128GB, or 112GB\u00a0for a 120GB\u00a0drive, is not a lot of space and you can only have a few modern games on your SSD at any one time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Pros &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<li>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!<\/li>\n<li>Kingston&#8217;s SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 120GB drive has improved over the previous V200 series with a new custom controller and memory that brings it up to near HyperX performance.<\/li>\n<li>SSD<em>Now<\/em> V300 is great bang for buck at $110 for a 120GB standalone drive or ten dollars more for a kit bundle<\/li>\n<li>TRIM support and garbage collection keeps your drive &#8220;like new&#8221;. The\u00a0SSD<em>Now<\/em> 300\u00a0SSDs also offer advanced wear-leveling technology, S.M.A.R.T. tools and DuraClass Technology.<\/li>\n<li>Excellent bundle for notebook or desktop in a single package makes setting up your SSD a breeze and well worth the ten dollars more over the standalone drive . However, standalone offers a good option for those\u00a0who already have the cloning SW and HW.<\/li>\n<li>3-year warranty and superb Kingston support stand it out from the &#8220;SSD crowd&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Cons &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<li>Price per GB is still high compared to mechanical hard drives.<\/li>\n<li>Limited storage compared to HDDs<\/li>\n<li>120GB is too small for a hardcore gamer; 240-256GB makes a difference to a gamer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The 120GB Kingston\u00a0SSD<em>Now<\/em>\u00a0300 deserves the ABT Great Value award. It is a good drive for gamers who don&#8217;t mind its limited capacity, there is plenty of room for Windows, applications and perhaps\u00a0five 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/t3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRxfBInukmNMVXQcYJY0wCMOdhHwRU0JTDjOyJ9ndAkl47y1hm2mW-KUQ\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/t3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRxfBInukmNMVXQcYJY0wCMOdhHwRU0JTDjOyJ9ndAkl47y1hm2mW-KUQ', '']);\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/t3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRxfBInukmNMVXQcYJY0wCMOdhHwRU0JTDjOyJ9ndAkl47y1hm2mW-KUQ\" width=\"120\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Our 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drives 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 upgrade them to 1TB drives as we are already feeling capacity constrained by our 27-game benchmark suite.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It pays in every way to keep up with ABT and the best way is to follow us is on ABT forum.\u00a0 Expect a OWC\u00a0HDD\/SSD dock and 256GB SSD evaluation, a Genius PC speaker review, a good exploration with the new Thermaltake Level 10 mouse &#8230; and much more as ABT prepares for CES with two reporters this year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Mark Poppin<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">ABT Senior Editor<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><p>Please join us in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/abt\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Forums<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Become a Fan on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/AlienBabelTech\/123268467142\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/AlienBabelTech\/123268467142', 'Facebook']);\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech', 'Twitter']);\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the latest updates from ABT, please <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?feed=rss2\" target=\"_blank\">join our RSS News Feed<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Join our Distributed Computing teams<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Folding@Home &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech &#8211; 164304<\/li>\n<li>SETI@Home &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech &#8211; 138705<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcommunitygrid.org\/reg\/viewRegister.do?teamID=3P39R3SRV1\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.worldcommunitygrid.org\/reg\/viewRegister.do?teamID=3P39R3SRV1', 'World Community Grid &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech']);\" target=\"_blank\">World Community Grid &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=32755\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=top title=\"Author: Mark Poppin\" src=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Kingston-v300-ImageLink.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":32818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2533,7814],"tags":[5958,820,1294,5956,5959,611,5957],"class_list":["post-32755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abt-news","category-articles","tag-120gb","tag-hdd","tag-hyperx","tag-kington","tag-lsi-sandforce-controller","tag-ssd","tag-ssdnow-v300"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}