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Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB SSD Review

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Kingston’s HyperX Predator is an SSD on a mission. It is a halo product meant to deliver extreme performance without sacrificing endurance but to deliver on both goals they had to look beyond typical form factors. With the SATA 6Gbps interface completely saturated by current generation drives and SATA Express failing to gain much traction Kingston has understandably turned towards high bandwidth PCIe connectivity.

Kingston has one of the longest and most memorable of histories when it comes to SSDs. Throughout the years they have constantly striven to offer consumers the best value drives possible. Sometimes this actually meant butting heads with Intel, other times it meant changing the NAND type. This time around they’re taking a path already taken by some competitors but also adding in a dash of adrenaline for some extreme performance.

intro.jpg

When taken at face value, the HyperX Predator is a simple M.2 format SSD but its simple form belies some rather stunning capabilities. While entry level M.2-based SSDs are perfectly happy puttering along with a two-lane PCIe 2.0 connection, the Predator requires an x4 PCIe 2.0 interface. This doesn’t even begin to approach the bandwidth Intel’s 750-series requires but it does somewhat narrow native compatibility to some X99 boards since few Z97 boards provide an x4 M.2 slot (there are some exceptions though). On the other hand, these requirements do tend to make this new drive an excellent bridge product between products like the Plextor’s M6e and OCZ’s latest RevoDrive.

From a raw specifications standpoint the HyperX Predator slots in perfectly between the two aforementioned drives. However, it isn’t meant to compete directly against the likes of Intel’s new 750 Series or even G.Skill’s Blade. Interestingly enough Kingston’s flagship is actually more expensive on a price-per-GB level than Intel’s alternative but that disparity will likely be made up via the Predator’s enhanced NAND endurance, AES-256 encryption and broader compatibility with today’s motherboards. It also handily beats the RevoDrive in this respect.

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Despite being available as a “bare” M.2 format drive, the Predator is actually quite adaptable since it can also be purchased with an inexpensive $10 half-height, half-length (HHHL) adapter card which allows direct mounting to a free x4 PCIe 2.0 slot. At $520 for the 480GB version this isn’t an inexpensive SSD by any stretch of the imagination but we’d highly recommend ponying up the coin for Kingston’s adapter. It makes the drive infinitely more appealing and it looks pretty damn cool as well.

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Due to their special relationship with Marvell, Kingston’s Predator will be one of the first solid state drives to make use of the brand new 'AltaPlus' 9293 controller. This four lane PCIe aware controller may not make use of the newer NVMe architecture, or even PCIe 3.0, it is AHCI based and promises to be much, much more capable in the performance arena than its predecessors - one of which powered the award winning Plextor M6e series.

nand_sm.jpg

Backstopping this new high performance controller is pair of 512MB Kingston-branded RAM ICs. With access to a whopping 1GB of RAM cache the HyperX Predator should never run out of room in its temporary storage during normal operations.

Further helping to boost performance Kingston has opted for Toshiba branded A19 Toggle Mode NAND ICs. More importantly this '480GB' drive sports a full 512GB of actual capacity with 32GB worth of NAND set aside for over-provisioning.

This combination of high performance NAND, high performance PCIe 2.0 x4 controller, massive onboard cache, and decent over-provisioning levels explains how Kingston was able to not only list sky high performance specifications but excellent write durability levels of 1.7 Drive Writes Per Day for three years. The only disappointing part is this expensive drive only has a three year warranty.

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Eagle-eyed readers will also notice one thing missing from this 2280 form-factor storage device: data loss protection. Unfortunately, this is one aspect that had to be sacrificed in order to fit everything else into such a small form-factor while retaining a reasonable asking price. Whether or not this is a deal breaker will be up to you and should be taken on a case by case basis.

ang2_sm.jpg

The HHHL version of Kingston’s HyperX Predator simply uses a PCIe x4 slot to M.2 adapter card. As an added bonus Kingston does not use a 'warranty void' sticker over the screw securing the card to the adapter board. This means you can change your mind later and use it in future built that does have an x4 M.2 slot without voiding your warranty.

ang3_sm.jpg

Kingston has taken the extra and highly unusual step of including a heatpad on the HHHL board. This turns the adapter into a large, if somewhat poor, heatsink and should help keep the HyperX Predator cool.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Test System & Testing Methodology

Testing Methodology


Testing a drive is not as simple as putting together a bunch of files, dragging them onto folder on the drive in Windows and using a stopwatch to time how long the transfer takes. Rather, there are factors such as read / write speed and data burst speed to take into account. There is also the SATA controller on your motherboard and how well it works with SSDs & HDDs to think about as well. For best results you really need a dedicated hardware RAID controller w/ dedicated RAM for drives to shine. Unfortunately, most people do not have the time, inclination or monetary funds to do this. For this reason our test-bed will be a more standard motherboard with no mods or high end gear added to it. This is to help replicate what you the end user’s experience will be like.

Even when the hardware issues are taken care of the software itself will have a negative or positive impact on the results. As with the hardware end of things, to obtain the absolute best results you do need to tweak your OS setup; however, just like with the hardware solution most people are not going to do this. For this reason our standard OS setup is used. However, except for the Windows 7 load test times we have done our best to eliminate this issue by having the drive tested as a secondary drive. With the main drive being an Intel DC S3700 800GB Solid State Drive.

For synthetic tests we used a combination of the ATTO Disk Benchmark, HDTach, HD Tune, Crystal Disk Benchmark, IOMeter, AS-SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark 7.

For real world benchmarks we timed how long a single 10GB rar file took to copy to and then from the devices. We also used 10gb of small files (from 100kb to 200MB) with a total 12,000 files in 400 subfolders.

For all testing a Asus Sabretooth TUF X99 LGA 2011-v3 motherboard was used, running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate edition. All drives were tested using either AHCI mode using Intel RST 10 drivers, or NVMHCI using Intel NVMe drivers.

All tests were run 4 times and average results are represented.

In between each test suite runs (with the exception being IOMeter which was done after every run) the drives are cleaned with either HDDerase, SaniErase or a manufactures 'Toolbox' and then quick formatted to make sure that they were in optimum condition for the next test suite.

Processor: Core i7 5930K
Motherboard: Asus Sabretooth TUF X99
Memory: 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
Hard Drive: Intel DC S3700 800GB, Intel P3700 800GB
Power Supply: XFX 850

SSD FIRMWARE (unless otherwise noted):

OCZ Vertex 2 100GB: 1.33
Vertex 460 240GB: 1.0
Intel 7230 240GB: L2010400
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB:DXM06B0Q
Plextor M6e 256GB: 1.03
AMD R7 240GB: 1.0
Crucial MX200: MU01
G.Skill Phoenix 480GB: 2.71
Intel 750: 8EV10135
Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB: 0C34L5TA


Samsung MDX controller:
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB- Custom firmware w/ 21nm Toggle Mode NAND

SandForce SF1200 controller:
OCZ Vertex 2 - ONFi 2 NAND

SandForce SF2281 controller:
G.Skill Phoenix 480GB - Custom firmware w/ 128Gbit ONFi 3 NAND

Marvell 9183 controller:
Plextor M6e 256GB- Custom firmware w/ 21nm Toggle Mode NAND

Marvell 9189 controller:
Crucial MX200 - Custom firmware w/ 128Gbit ONFi 3 NAND

Marvell 9293 controller:
Kingston HyperX Predator - Custom firmware w/ 19nm Toggle Mode NAND

Barefoot 3 controller:
AMD R7 (M00) - 19nm Toggle Mode NAND w/ custom firmware
OCZ Arc 100 (M10) - 19nm Toggle Mode NAND

Intel X25 G3 controller:
Intel 730 - Custom firmware w/ ONFi 2 NAND

Intel NVMe G1 Controller:
Intel 750 - Customer firmware w/ MLC 20nm NAND
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Read Bandwidth / Write Performance

Read Bandwidth


<i>For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience with these hard drives. The long test was run to give a slightly more accurate picture. We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings and thus we no longer included it. The most important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem.</i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/read.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>

Write Performance


<i>For this benchmark HD Tune Pro was used. To run the write benchmark on a drive, you must first remove all partitions from that drive and then and only then will it allow you to run this test. Unlike some other benchmarking utilities the HD Tune Pro writes across the full area of the drive, thus it easily shows any weakness a drive may have.</i>

<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/write.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>

As you can see, by opting for a quad lane controller, Kingston has been able to provide an M.2 device that is exceedingly fast for an AHCI environment. Unfortunately, while it may be fast for a single based storage device it is not nearly as fast as what Intel or even G.Skill offer. This is most likely going to be the reoccurring theme of this review: the Predator is fast but has a big asterisk next to the word 'fast'.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark


The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drives read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.

atto_r.jpg

atto_w.jpg

By removing the PCH from the equation and utilizing the PCIe bus, Kingston is able to better leverage the performance of a wider and lower latency interface. Unfortunately while it can somewhat harness this additional power, and is better than previous generations, the AltaPlus controller is nowhere near as powerful as the similarly priced Intel 750's NVMe controller. NVMe really does make that big a difference as it is not only a more efficient architecture for Solid State Drives it also allows for a greater number of channels to be supported.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Crystal DiskMark / PCMark 7

Crystal DiskMark


<i>Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB. </i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/cdm_r.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/cdm_w.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>


PCMark 7


<i>While there are numerous suites of tests that make up PCMark 7, only one is pertinent: the HDD Suite. The HDD Suite consists of numerous tests that try and replicate real world drive usage. Everything from how long a simulated virus scan takes to complete, to MS Vista start up time to game load time is tested in these core tests; however we do not consider this anything other than just another suite of synthetic tests. For this reason, while each test is scored individually we have opted to include only the overall score.</i>

<div align="center"><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/pcm7.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>

Once again Kinston has created a rather remarkable M.2-based solid state drive. However, if you do remove the Intel 750 from the equation the HyperX Predator does indeed prove that Kingston still has what it takes to offer consumers' excellent SSDs in unique form-factors.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
AS-SSD / Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

AS-SSD


AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 6. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data.

asd_r.jpg

asd_w.jpg


Anvil Storage Utilities Pro


Much like AS-SSD, Anvil Pro was created to quickly and easily – yet accurately – test your drives. While it is still in the Beta stages it is a versatile and powerful little program. Currently it can test numerous read / write scenarios but two in particular stand out for us: 4K queue depth of 4 and 4K queue depth of 16. A queue depth of four along with 4K sectors can be equated to what most users will experience in an OS scenario while 16 depth will be encountered only by power users and the like. We have also included the 4k queue depth 1 results to help put these two other numbers in their proper perspective. All settings were left in their default states and the test size was set to 1GB.

anvil_r.jpg

anvil_w.jpg


There is certainly no denying the Predator's performance potential ability but its price is quite high in relation to high end products like Intel's 750 series. No matter how good an M.2 drive it is, at the end of the day its AHCI architecture, PCIe 2.0 bus limitations, and smaller form-factor simply cannot compete against similarly priced enthusiast grade drives. By the same token these results are still very, very good.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
IOMETER

IOMETER


<i>IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 queue depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular queue depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.</i>

<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/iom.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>

While it may not be what we would classify as a powerhouse, the combination of a good controller, with a massive RAM cache, backstopped by excellent NAND is indeed a good combination but one that ultimately gets overwhelmed in workstation-centric tasks.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Windows 8.1 / Adobe CS5 Load Time

Windows 8.1 Start Up w/ Boot A/V Scan


When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. We have chosen Windows 8.1 64bit Pro as our Operating System with all 'fast boot' options disabled in the BIOS. In previous load time tests we would use the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line; this however is no longer the case. We have not only added in a secondary Anti-Virus to load on startup, but also an anti-malware program. We have set Super Anti-Spyware to initiate a quick scan on Windows start-up and the completion of the quick scan will be our new finish line.


boot.jpg



Adobe CS5 Load Time


Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, and while the latest version is actually pretty decent, when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit fared in the newly updated Adobe crucible!

adobe.jpg


While not at the very top of our charts the Kingston HyperX Predator proves that is not simply a one hit wonder. Rather it has the horsepower to provide real world abilities that are in excess of what previous single controller AHCI based devices can offer.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Firefox Performance / Real World Data Transfers

Firefox Portable Offline Performance


Firefox is notorious for being slow on loading tabs in offline mode once the number of pages to be opened grows larger than a dozen or so. We can think of fewer worse case scenarios than having 100 tabs set to reload in offline mode upon Firefox startup, but this is exactly what we have done here.

By having 100 pages open in Firefox portable, setting Firefox to reload the last session upon next session start and then setting it to offline mode, we are able to easily recreate a worst case scenario. Since we are using Firefox portable all files are easily positioned in one location, making it simple to repeat the test as necessary. In order to ensure repetition, before touching the Firefox portable files, we have backed them up into a .rar file and only extracted a copy of it to the test device.


ff.jpg



Real World Data Transfers


No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter or PCMark is, it cannot really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. All of us here at Hardware Canucks strive to give you the best, most complete picture of a review item’s true capabilities and to this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 10.00GB contiguous file and a folder containing 400 subfolders with a total 12,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (10.00 GB total).

Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found.


copy_lg.jpg

copy_sm.jpg


This level of performance is impressive and we would have simply been amazed at the AltaPlus and A19 NAND combination if it weren’t for Intel stealing Kingston's thunder. With that being said this is still a bloody good drive.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Partial and Full Drive Performance

Partial and Full Drive Performance


<i>While it is important to know how a drive will perform under optimal conditions, more realistic scenarios are just as important. Knowing if a solid state drive will behave differently when partially or even nearly full than when it is empty is very important information to know. To quickly and accurately show this crucial information we have first filled the drive to 50% capacity and re-tested using both synthetic and real world tests. After the completion of this we then re-test at 75% and 90% of full capacity. </i>

Synthetic Test Results

<i>For our synthetic testing we have opted for our standard PCMark 7 test.</i>

<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/data_pcm.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>

Real World Results

<i>For a real world application we have opted for a modified version of our standard Windows 7 Start Up test. Unlike our standard Windows 7 image this image is based on a working system that has been upgraded numerous times of the past few years and represents an even more realistic real world test.</i>


<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/HyperX_Predator/data_boot.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>

This is one area that <i>all</i> Marvell-based drives stumble over. However, unlike previous Marvell models - like the Crucial MX200 series- the Kingston HyperX Predator has enough performance that even with a noticeable drop it is still very fast when full. It is just a shame that Intel has once again put a pin in Kingston's balloon, just as they did back in the V40 days.
 

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