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Review: Hyperx Reviewed by: Antonis Provided by: Kingston Model: Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD Firmware version: SAFM00.r
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It’s no secret that things have started to
change when it comes to SSDs, and with the arrival of NVMe drives it starts to
look like the days of SATA drives are limited. In a way this might be true, but
it will take a long time before this happens, so there is still a lot of room
for SATA drives to prove that they deserve a place in our system. So Kingston
was very kind and provided me with the HyperX Savage SSD, a drive that
according to the specifications is amongst the fastest SATA drives that you can
get, and soon I will have a chance to verify all this.
Before I move forward with this review I
would like to point you to the Kingston website, so that you can learn all
about their Hyperx Series, and the history of Kingston, simply by clicking here.
Now let’s take a look at the package, its
contents, and the drive.
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD
Let’s start by taking a look at the package
and the contents of the Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD. We'll start with the package.
The
front of the Hyperx Savage SSD box,
and
the back of the box.
So let's take a closer look at what you
will find inside the Hyperx Savage SSD package, and to be honest you will have everything
that you need. Starting with an SATA cable, a Hyperx sticker, eight screws, a
2.5mm spacer, a screwdriver, a USB3 external case, and a USB3 cable. Most
importantly inside there is the SSD and serial number for a free copy of
Acronis True Image. With everything that is included with the Hyperx Savage
it’s clear that not only you will be able to make your life much easier, but
also you will be ready to clone your old hard drive to your new SSD and use that
old hard drive as an external drive right after the installation your new SSD.
A
look at the top side of the Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD.
And
the underside of the Hyperx Savage SSD.
Here is the front side of the PCB, on which
we can see the DRAM, the eight NAND chips, and the PHISON controller.
On the side we find another set of eight
NAND chips.
Specifications of the Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD
In the pictures below we get a more
detailed view of the specifications of the Hyperx Savage SSD series as they
appear on official website.
In the above picture we can see that the
drive is available in four capacities starting from 120GB, moving up to 240GB, 480GB,
and 960GB. We can also see the main specifications of all the drives, but in
our case I will focus on the specifications of the 240GB drive.
CrystalDiskInfo
In
the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Hyperx Savage 240GB
SSD.
Let’s head to the next page where we
take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.
Test machine
For this review I will be using a computer
with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
- Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4.4GHz
- RAM: RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4x4GB
2400Mhz @ 2666MHz - GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
controller - OS SSD: Kingston V300 240GB
- PSU: Seasonic 750W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 8.1
The Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD was connected
to the first SATA port on the ASUS X99-A motherboard. All power saving features
were disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.
The
SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology
(RST) Version 13.1.0.1058.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Kingston
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in
this review.
- HD Tune
Pro - ATTO
- Iometer
- AS SSD
Benchmark - CrystalDiskMark
- Anvil’s
Storage Utilities - PCMark
Test procedures
I will start off our testing procedures
explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Kingston
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.
SSD technology has moved so fast in the
last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very
limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some
basic benchmarks for the Kingston Hyperx Savage SSD, and will complement this
with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show
how the Kingston Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD performs in the real world.
The reality of SSD performance
While I can easily show you which SSD is
technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating
system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.
A typical use of a small capacity SSD at
the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the
SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost
impossible to detect.
Let’s look at why this is the case.
Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11
seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in
time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?
The fact is, all modern SSDs are only
ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s
only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be
that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible
difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential
performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential
read/write performance.
Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance
IOPS
This is a fairly complex subject, but I
will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.
The term IOPS is the amount of input or
output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for
example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write
IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K
random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random
read output transactions in a one second interval.
Ok, now we have some figures to work with,
the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?
This will depend on your usage pattern. If
you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word
processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a
fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar
to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.
On the other hand, if the SSD is being used
for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is
the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of application
does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.
So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K
IOPS for a desktop?
In fact you don’t need this type of
performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K
IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.
OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are
actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?
You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K
IOPS surely the rest is wasted?
While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS,
IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000
4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if
you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about
a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to
process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K
is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before
it can move on to the next transaction.
In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.
So how will a desktop user even notice this
faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?
Multitasking is a good example. The more
tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.
Sequential performance
I have always maintained that sequential
performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a
desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.
To me this was always so obvious for a
desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.
Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files,
but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the
files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using
their PCs these days?
Summary
So how does this shape up in the real
world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?
In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD
with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster
than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS
performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random
performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high
performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.
However, you can still have an SSD that is
very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive
sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the SSDs used in this article were in a
clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive
had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.
- Both our spinning HDD drives were
defragged before the start of each test.
- All SSD and HDD used in this article had
their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.
Where I use graphs in this article to
display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our
readers to see which drive we are reviewing.
Hyperx
Savage 240GB SSD
Comparison
SDD
Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune
HD Tune – Sequential reading test
I present the graph below for comparison
with other recently tested drives.
The Hyperx Savage SSD is able to stay ahead
of the Fury drive but its overall performance on this test is just good, giving
us a result of 415.7 MB/Sec read speed.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.
Moving on to ATTO we can see that the Hyperx
Savage SSD is able to reach its rated speeds, both for reads and writes.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a
problem on a system drive.
Again the Hyperx Savage SSD gave
outstanding sequential read and write results, and its overall performance is
also very good.
The two graphs below will give a more
detailed view of how the Hyperx Savage compares with other SSDs that I have retested.
Here I present the graph for the read speed
tests. You can compare the Hyperx Savage performance with other drives I have
tested.
King of this chart with 531.5 MB/Sec of
write speed and this is the fastest drive that I have tested. You can compare
the Hyperx Savage SSD with other drives that I have tested.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool
specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading
and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.
AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded
performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test
that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at
a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests
run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then
you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.
After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark
derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects
of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.
Now let’s look at the results for the Kingston
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison
drives’ results are presented in the form of a graph.
A very impressive and unexpected result for
the Hyperx Savage SSD, as it was able to give the best result that I've had so
far in this test.
Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark 8.....
PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite
We have built quite a close relationship
with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software
that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great
pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world'
benchmarking suite.
I will describe the basic way that each
test is carried out, above the graph for each test.
PC Mark 8 HDD suite results
Here
is a screenshot displaying the results for the Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD.
227.96 MB/Sec is a good result for the
Hyperx Savage SSD, but I would like to have seen slightly higher numbers.
The Hyperx Savage SSD is only 0.7 seconds
slower than the fastest drive, the result is good.
58 seconds for the Hyperx Savage SSD.
The Hyperx Savage SSSD is in the middle of
the chart, a very good result, and again only 0.7 seconds from the best result.
Another good result for the Hyperx Savage
SSD.
Once again the Hyperx Savage SSD was able
to find its way to the middle of the chart.
Again a good result, but I would have liked
to have seen a better outcome in this test.
Again when it comes to games the Hyperx
Savage SSD is just showing an okay result.
As we can see from the above graph, there
isn’t much difference in performance from the fastest to the slowest drive, but
here we can see that the Hyperx Savage SSD isn’t a drive among the fastest ones
that I have tested.
9.3 seconds for the Hyperx Savage to finish
this test.
Another 9.3 seconds result for the Hyperx
Savage SSD, the same result that I got with the Hyperx Fury SSD. Overall the
result is very good.
Summary:
To be honest when we are talking about
differences that are less than a second I would say that most users will almost
never notice them. However when these differences are measured, then we can
clearly see which drive is the fastest and the work that the manufacturer has
put into the drive, and also optimizing the firmware.
Kingston’s Hyperx Savage SSD is a fast
drive, but it needs that little small extra boot in performance to be able to
stand out. Overall the drive has very good performance and maybe it will get
that small bit extra with a firmware update in the future? Let’s hope so.
Let's head to the next page for our
IOMeter test results.....
I/O Performance
There is little point of having an SSD
drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't
handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able
to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive
continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random
files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000
I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade
mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the
more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave
more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage
in.
The things that I will look at are the
total I/O per second and total MB/s.
Partition alignment and sector boundaries
Windows 7 and Vista will automatically
align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t.
It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also
restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it
can. The Hyperx Savage 240GBSSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these
boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility
with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.
IOMeter allows us to set the sector
boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector
boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.
I will provide a screenshot of the tests on
the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All
the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.
If any of you would like to see a
screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to
request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.
All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data
set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.
IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.
The first test involves creating continual
4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it
is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.
Queue depth 1
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random write queue depth profile
For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD
performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight
multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking,
the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.
As we can see the Hyperx is doing a very
good job when it comes to write speeds.
IOMeter 4K random read test.
If there are many 4k files created, then that
must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k
reading performance.
Queue depth 1
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random read queue depth profile.
This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.
Read performance of the Hyperx Savage is
very good.
IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.
Sequential writing performance is also very
important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing
performance of the drive.
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data
The Hyperx Savage is on top of the chart
when it comes to sequential write speed, giving an excellent result of 534.84MB/Sec.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test
The Hyperx Savage continues to show
excellent performance, this time in the read test, giving the second best
result I have seen so far.
IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).
When running applications you will find
that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files,
being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64
(threaded).
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD – Workstation simulation
This is a result I didn’t expect, as we can
see the drive in this test gave a very poor result, only 124.03 MB/Sec.
Summary
The Hyperx Savage is an excellent drive
when it comes to sequential read and write speed, and it also has very good
performance with smaller files. Overall it appears to be a very good performing
drive.
Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Hyperx Savage SSD performs
using Anvil's Storage utilities....
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As well as performing SSD endurance tests.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD
benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random
at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly
than this, all using real test data.
Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD
benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test
data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few
data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.
I will include a screenshot of the review
drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If
you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.
I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.
- 0 fill (100% compressible data)
- Application simulation profile (46%
compressed) - 100% (non compressible data)
So let’s begin the tests.
0 fill
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (0 fill)
Results
are ranked by highest total score.
An outstanding result for the Hyperx Savage
SSD. The drive topped the chart in this test, and it's clear that when it comes
to compressible data the Savage SSD has lots of speed.
Application profile
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (application profile)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
Here we can see that the Hyperx Savage SSD
is able to stay above the middle of the chart, a very good result.
100% incompressible
Hyperx Savage 240GB SSD (100% incompressible)
Results are based on the highest total score.
The Hyperx Savage SSD is able to stay in
the middle of the chart, a result that is once again very good.
Summary
The overall performance of the Hyperx
Savage SSD is very good, but the drive was able to shine when it handled
compressible data.
Now let's head to the next page for some
real world tests....
It has become clear that simply conducting
endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few
benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.
Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver
very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very
little about how the drive will perform in the real world.
If you intend to use your SSD as your
primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and
running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than
just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.
From now on I will only use the log files
from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and
also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all
power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way
that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.
Real
world copy tests
I will now conduct some real world copy
tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In
these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.
As I said earlier from now on all my test
files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive
using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the
files.
Before I move on to the test, I want to
give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.
As
we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.
Copy tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)
I will start this set of tests by copying
259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to
the RAM disk.
Both read and write results are very good
for the Hyperx Savage SSD, especially the write result which is excellent.
Copy tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)
Continuing my set of tests, but this time I
will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the
currently testing SSD and vice versa.
Once again an excellent result when it
comes to write for the Hyperx Savage SSD, but it falls behind in the read test.
Copy Tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)
Copying a movie is very common task for all
of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM
disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.
Only one drive was able to be faster that
the Hyperx Savage SSD in the read test, but the Hyperx Savage took no prisoners
when it came to write speed. It has simply excellent performance with
sequential data.
Copy Tests – Small files (533MB)
I have decided to adapt the very small
files test that I am using in my USB3 flash test, so this time I will be also
copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to
the RAM disk.
I introduced this test for flash drives
sometime ago, however I thought that it would be nice to have an idea of how an
SSD handles small files, so let’s compare the Hyperx Savage SSD with other SSDs
that I have tested and see what results I obtained.
As you see from the above graph the Hyperx
Savage SSD gave a very good performance in this test.
Copy Tests – ISO (7927MB)
For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron
Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.
In a way this result was expected,
especially if you look that the previous sequential results, as the drive
showed the best result that I've had for this test.
Windows start-up and closedown based on the Event Viewer
Logs
Start-up & Shutdown time
The next two screen shots were taken after I'd
installed all the drivers and software that I use every day. Below are the
results.
The start-up time for the Hyperx Savage 240GB
SSD is very impressive.
Shutdown time for the Hyperx Savage 240GB
SSD is again impressive, however as always the results over time will change.
You can see some previous results here
that are based on my old system when I was using a Z77 ASRock extreme4 and an
Intel 2500K with 16GB of DDR3 RAM.
Installing applications
Installing applications is possibly
something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk,
then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD
drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications,
most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.
For these tests, we picked some popular
applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not
hamper the performance of the target drive.
We then installed these applications onto
our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of
our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time
taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.
MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)
Now let’s see
how the Hyperx Savage SSD performs
with the installation of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.
The procedure
followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and
used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.
I am leaving the previous graphs as
reference points.
We can clearly see that the Hyperx Savage
SSD was the third fastest drive, but not as fast as the Hyperx Fury. Thankfully
you only need to install Office once.
Speed degradation after heavy testing
On this page I will measure how the SSD
performs after heavy testing and usage.
I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when the
OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive
performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its
capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark.
The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be
filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will
simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that
the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the
drive performs.
In this picture you can see the test files
that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary
from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.
In the picture below you will find all the
applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft
Office 2007.
Now let’s start our tests.
This is the first run of AS SSD with the Hyperx
Savage 240GB SSD, and here is the overall score of 1117 points. As we can see
it was slightly lower than the 1170 points that I got when testing the drive as
a spare.
So what happens when I leave the drive with
less than 4GB of free space. We can see here that the Hyperx Savage SSD slows down,
and gives a total score of 965 points.
After deleting almost half the files from
the SSD and running the optimize option in Windows 8.1 we can see that the
results have improved, a lot I might say. The score goes up to 1183 points for
the Hyperx Savage.
Finally, after removing all the unnecessary
files, plus leaving the drive for five minutes to idle, the result takes a
small hit, but overall is still within very acceptable limits. and much better
from the first run.
This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
To sum up, this is what I would say:
Looking at the Hyperx Savage you have to be
impressed, and as always everything start with the package and its contents. Something
that sets an example as to how to give everything that anyone would want. After
that comes that design of the drive, something that even in the past Kingston
has done an outstanding job of over the years, and this continues with the Hyperx
Savage SSD.
But all this doesn't make a great SSD, what
makes a great SSD is the performance, and when it comes to that the Hyperx
Savage is a very good drive as a daily drive, with lots of speed for most of
your tasks, and we can see that in the PCMark tests, but as always a little
extra speed is more than welcomed.
That extra speed can be found in the
sequential read and write results, and the Hyperx Savage was able to give the
best results that I have seen so far. Also its performance in my real world tests
was very good.
If you can find it at a good price don’t
spent any time looking around, stay with the Hyperx Savage SSD. It's fast
and also has an outstanding amount of extras that will make your life easy and simple
upgrading your SSD.
I am going to give the Kingston Hyperx
Savage SSD the “Very good” rating.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark for
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