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TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL
Our analysis today will be conducted with our Asus Z77 Premium Test Bench. Clicking on any pictures or benchmarks will bring up a more easily viewable high resolution image.
In testing, our main objective is to obtain results as pure and as accurate as possible and we want to ensure that no anomalies slip through. Simply put, we want to provide you with the absolute best results the tested hardware can provide. Repetition in testing is standard and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 safe mode to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.
In order to validate and confirm our findings, testing is supported by industry accepted benchmark programs. All results are displayed through capture of the actual benchmark for better understanding of the testing process by the reader.
We would like to thank ASUS (P8Z77-V Premium
), Intel (Core i7-3770K), Crucial (Ballistix), Corsair (H100) and Be Quiet (PSU/Fans) for supporting the build of our Z77 Premium Test Bench.
BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark Vantage. We rely on these as they each have a way of supporting one another yet, at the same time, adding a new performance benchmark to the total picture. Much of the software is free and can be downloaded simply by clicking on the linked title.
SSD COMPRESSION AND TESTING FLUCTUATIONS
All SSDs are not created equal and many new SSD enthusiasts realize that when they test their new drive to confirm specifications and ensure all is in order. SandForce controlled SSDs, as in the Kingston SSDNow V300 SSD we are testing today, use compression techniques in storage whereas many others do not. This creates a bit of confusion when enthusiasts test the drive with random data through benchmarking programs such as AS SSD and Crystal DiskMark. The results seem to be lower than the listed specifications.
The results actually present a false portrayal of the drives ability when compared to other drives such as Samsung, Crucial or Intel. It is for this reason that all of our comparison testing is done through PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage HDD Suite simply provides evaluation results based on transfer speeds reached through typical user patterns. Vantage provides a better testing medium, in that, it sees through the typical synthetic benchmarks and provides us with ‘true to life’ results of the drive.
Crystal Disk Info provides some excellent information about the SSD itself to include its health, product information, ‘power on’ information as well as the characteristics of the SSD. We can see that the V300 Pro is capable of TRIM as it is not greyed out, much like AAM. The V300 also provides us with plenty of SMART attributes to monitor throughout use of the drive.
Les,
What exact optimizations did you make in BIOS?
Is there anything you recommend doing on a Gigabyte Z77 UEFI BIOS without disabling the SLEEP function?
Thanks
work optimizations on hyperx 3k ????
I’m having issues installing an operating system on the SSD. Doesn’t show up in diskpart or windows disk manager, tried it by external enclosure and swapping it out for my laptop HDD. Shows up in BIOS, but not in disk manager or diskpart when using windows 7 setup cd and windows 7 setup USB.
It could be defective, but statistically most issues are human ones or hardware incompatibilities.
I am not sure where you have gone with this. Have you tried a simple install to check if the SSD was recognized during the W7 installation process? I have installed ….crap must be over a thousand W7 systems by now…and have never encountered a situation where the drive was recognized in the bios but not during initial installation.
Nevermind, fixed it.
Next question is how’d you tweak to get the final performance you did?
Ok, but what was the issue?
hello please how to tweak to get the final performance you did?
Les, great article. One question though… why do you state “112 GB” after formatting? This is a continued misrepresentation of hard drive advertising. As you probably know, manufacturers sell drives using a base-10 system (1 GB = 10^9 bytes), whereas Windows sees the size with base-2 (1 GiB = 2^30 bytes), now known as “Gibibytes” or GiB to avoid confusion. This conversion leaves us at 111.75 GiB from 120 GB, what you call the difference due to formatting.
I apologize if I sound a bit frustrated but we explain things in a VERY simple way and using GiB does nothing more than to confuse the consumer CONSIDERABLY. It is a VERY simple method to explain the RAW total, advertised total and available total as we do, especially since 99.99999% of consumers haven’t a clue as to what you speak. They JUST want to know how much space is available. Thanks ahead Dan!
I have two 120GB V300s.
The first has 505 firmware which works at it should.
The second has 506 firmware and is way slower.
Could you check a new one with 506 to see if there are differences or is something wrong with mine?
I have same issue, 506 is significantly slower. Can someone check it? Or retest with new FW will be more than helpful.
For me the AS SSD numbers (on SATA 2) are the following Read | Write 505,506.
Seq 256 , 175 | 158 , 133
4K 14 , 11 | 45 , 26
4K-64 123 , 91 | 109 , 114
Acc 0.138 , 0.195 | 0.321 , 0.405
Here is you answer….
https://media.kingston.com/support/downloads/V300_Benchmark_Brief_MKF_586.pdf
A follow-up review on the current asynchronous version might be helpful.
I think this review needs to be updated to reflect how Kingston changed the ssd from what they sent out for reviewing to what is being sold now. It’s a big story that this website should have caught onto but it appears not. Instead I shall share with you a link to some up to date information.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand