480GB HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD Review

[Apoptosis]

HyperX today released the HyperX Predator PCIe SSD! This highly anticipated drive was supposed to ship in February 2015, but was delayed a number of weeks in order to give Kingston time to perfect the firmware on their new highest-end SSD. Getting the HyperX Predator PCIe SSD firmware dialed in was important to everyone at Kingston as not only is this their flagship SSD in the HyperX lineup, but it is also Kingston Technology's very first M.2 PCI Express drive!



Article Title: 480GB HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/480gb-hyper ... iew_160496

[Calamar]

Nice review,
since I've seen positively answers to the use of the m6e on old platforms, detected as AHCI drive, could you test this drive in your X58 platform? (you've got a i7-920 there :D) Just to test if BIOS detects the drive and windows 7 can be installed upon it with its default driver.

I'm looking for a pcie drive for my rampage II extreme given sata limitations (and the addin sata3 card poor performance), and I was waiting for the new pcie2 4x to pop up, because 2x give almost same performance numbers than a sata 3 devices.

It would be also interesting to compare IO and 4k read/write against samsung 850 pro, those 1,1GB/s transfer may look great, but thats not all that matters, specially in a system drive.

Thanks for the review.

[Apoptosis]

It would be also interesting to compare IO and 4k read/write against samsung 850 pro, those 1,1GB/s transfer may look great, but thats not all that matters, specially in a system drive.

Yup agreed, but Samsung 850 has not supplied me with an 850 for the test bench here in St. Louis.

[Kaos Kid]

It would be also interesting to compare IO and 4k read/write against samsung 850 pro, those 1,1GB/s transfer may look great, but thats not all that matters, specially in a system drive.

Yup agreed, but Samsung 850 has not supplied me with an 850 for the test bench here in St. Louis.

A shot across the bow! Samsung, you listening?

[Calamar]

It would be also interesting to compare IO and 4k read/write against samsung 850 pro, those 1,1GB/s transfer may look great, but thats not all that matters, specially in a system drive.

Yup agreed, but Samsung 850 has not supplied me with an 850 for the test bench here in St. Louis.

A shot across the bow! Samsung, you listening?

But the pro version

Don't forget to plug the hyper-x in your X58 and boot it if you have a moment

[sgkean]

Man, if I had the spare cash I'd pick one of these up to replace my Intel SSD. The performance difference is huge compared to a standard SSD. Too bad I can't afford to pick up one LOL

[Apoptosis]

Man, if I had the spare cash I'd pick one of these up to replace my Intel SSD. The performance difference is huge compared to a standard SSD. Too bad I can't afford to pick up one LOL

$0.96 per GB is too expensive for a high-end PCIe SSD? I remember when I was paying $5+ per GB for a SATA II (3Gbps) SSD!

[sgkean]

Not really, just don't have the spare cash at the moment :D Maybe once I sell my truck, I'll splurge and get it LOL

[Apoptosis]

Not really, just don't have the spare cash at the moment :D Maybe once I sell my truck, I'll splurge and get it LOL

Truck versus SSD? Truck wins!

[sgkean]

HA! Don't use it, I have to force myself to drive it to the store. My Jeep is MUCH more comfortable and nice

[Coughie]

Nathan, your fine review opened with the statements

... the HyperX Predator PCIe SSD... was delayed a number of weeks in order to give Kingston time to perfect the firmware... Getting the... firmware dialed in was important to everyone at Kingston...

, which I've no doubt is the case; however, I've been wondering over the past week whether there might still be a bug or two in the firmware, or some other impediment to consistent performance.

Take a look at the ATTO graphs for the Predator, then the Plextor M6e Black Edition: http://www.legitreviews.com/480gb-hyper ... w_160496/3, followed by the original M6e: http://www.legitreviews.com/plextor-m6e ... w_144812/3. Next, here's the Samsung XP941 ATTO results: http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-xp9 ... w_142369/2, and finally, Samsung's SM951 under ATTO: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8979/sams ... -review/10. Although the Plextors show a drop in read transfer rates between 64KB and 1024KB, with a big dip centered at 256KB, the Predator shows an abrupt, severe drop in performance at 128KB, with gradual recovery till levelling out again at 4096KB. The Samsungs quickly rise to near flat speed consistency by 32KB.

Again, just take a gander at these AS SSD graphs in comparison: http://www.legitreviews.com/480gb-hyper ... w_160496/6; http://www.legitreviews.com/plextor-m6e ... w_144812/3; http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-xp9 ... w_142369/2. (You'll have to scroll partway down each page to find them.) The Plextor M6e's read line is slightly wavy, with the write curve showing a repeating, uniform dip-and-spike pattern suggesting an oscillation of sorts, covering a range of about 70MB/s. Samsung's XP941 exhibits a roughly similar response, with the write line showing a periodic variance that, ranging about 40MB/s, is fairly proportional to the M6e's. The Predator's curves, on the other hand, are joltingly jagged, and are all dips, with extreme velocity variance at different points along the data-compressibility-proportion scale: at times, reading falls to below 40% of the usual rate, but writing suffers more, with the worst dip descending to an abysmal 14% of normal speed! Running the test again after performing Secure Erase flattened all but one trough in the read line, but the write rate curve still looks like a profile of the ceiling of Mammoth Cave!

Since Nathan was so diplomatic in writing his review -- and goodness knows, I wanted to see an effulgent report, with supporting test results, as much as anyone not connected with Kingston, I guess, since my new build is champing at the bit (pun intended) to have one of these new units in the saddle -- I don't want to take a chastizing tone, either, as far as the Predator's shortfalls are concerned, so early in its career. Again, I have no doubt Kingston's programmers have been burning the midnight oil, diligently converting caffeine into code , but I hesitate to become the early adopter I was planning on being, having seen those uneven curves. If the cause is firmware glitches, which are likely to be straightened out with an update farther down the line, I may still go ahead and order one, but I don't want to sink my dough into something that is problematic in the way certain older Sandforce-controlled SDDs from several years ago were, or Samsung's 840 EVOs have been... The prudent thing would be to bide my time, and see what the near future holds, regarding Kingston's engineers' and programmers' ironing out these inconsistencies, but I don't really want to buy an interim SATA SSD, or, again, wait, till Plextor's M7e is released this summer.

I'm interested in the thoughts others might have about this. Whaddya have t' say, folks?

[Coughie]

Well, it's been a fortnight since my original post to this thread, and I've been keeping my eyes peeled for additional Predator reviews, particularly ones with ATTO and AS SSD graphs such as those provided by Nathan Kirsch on pages 3 and 6 in his gracious review here: http://www.legitreviews.com/480gb-hyper ... iew_160496. During that time, 4 more major tech sites have published online reviews which include an ATTO benchmark graph that we can look at -- again, for indications of how consistent the early test samples of the 480GB Predator are in showing a dramatic write transfer speed drop involving files between 64KB and 2048KB in size. One site, whose ATTO graph I didn't include in my original post (since it was a virtual duplicate of the benchmark response Legit Reviews' report included) has performed the ATTO test using 2 480GB Predator drives in RAID0; I'm including both here since this post is something more of a broad -- albeit very informal -- survey of the Predator's performance under ATTO than was my initial post. (The fifth site's review lacked the standard ATTO bar graph, and none showed AS SSD results in graphic form -- hence, my focus on ATTO alone.)

Here's the ATTO graph from the first published review of the Predator: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews ... w-480gb/2/ (at the bottom of the page); this review followed LR's: http://www.bjorn3d.com/2015/03/480gb-hy ... 0p2480g/5/ (also at the bottom).

Next, came this one -- and when I saw it, my jaw dropped, and my heart leapt: http://proclockers.com/reviews/storage/ ... page=0%2C3 (the first benchmark in the review, I might add)! Now this was what I had hoped to see to begin with! Such high consistency in data transfer rates across the range of file sizes is a thing of technical beauty! Overall, it looks as smooth as Samsung's two M.2 PCIe drives'.

After that gem came a disappointing repeat of the previous ATTO graphs, but with a twist -- all ATTO benchmarks shown till now have been with the queue depth set at 4; this review shows the results with depths of 2, 4 and 10: http://www.custompcreview.com/reviews/k ... w/23727/4/. Irregularities abound, but they vary with the change in queue depth.

This is the graph of a pair of Predators in RAID0 configuration: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews ... as-fast/2/. The extreme drops in speed seen in all but one ATTO run have been moderated significantly, but as the review's author noted, "... these results do not show perfect scaling... "

Last, I'm going to toss in a graph of the ATTO performance of Intel's new 750 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, in part, to illustrate the unique shape of the overall curve another high-performance PCIe SSD's ATTO benchmark takes: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews ... industry/3, but also to invite comparison of this unit's performance to the 2 Predators in RAID0.

I might add here that the Plextor M6e in both its variants has a quirky dip in its curve -- but in the read area, instead: http://www.legitreviews.com/plextor-m6e ... w_144812/3, http://www.legitreviews.com/480gb-hyper ... w_160496/3 (second graph from top).

What a graphical single-benchmark comparison of the performance of these 7 SSDs means, I won't attempt to say, other than to comment that various types of NAND, coupled with different controller chips, combined with particular versions of their associated firmware, as implemented by individual manufacturers -- along with inevitable variance in the mass-production process, no matter how stringent the QA and exacting the QC -- leads to performance differences between various models of a type of product. (Duh!)

But to get back to the real reason I assembled these posts -- the inconsistencies shown in two important indicators of measurable performance of Kingston's 480GB HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD have me puzzled. And now, with one test instance's graphic output showing a drive with practically none of the unevenness demonstrated by 5 other similar units under the same test, with the same settings, I could really use input from my fellow LR members as to what's going on! If what we're seeing were due to the need for further tweaking of the Predator's firmware, then why did the one sample -- at least, in that one instance -- show "normal" behaviour? Ar-r-rgh! I just wanna know that if I buy one o' those things, it'll behave properly, and I won't be shredding my wig! ~X(

[Calamar]

I bought one given I can return the hdd if it doesn't boot on my motherboard. I think in the "long" run this may be a better disk than the m6e which gives slightly more performance than a sata 3 disk.

If it boots i'll check those speed jagging! But since my only has sata 2 connectors this is the best option by far anyway.

[Coughie]

Man! It's great to find another post here, Calamar! (I was starting to worry that I had used the wrong fork for the second course! )

I agree with you that the Predator is preferable to the M6e -- at least, it is in my case, considering that my machine-in-progress is based on an A10-7850K on a G1.Sniper A88X, with a G.Skill TridentX F3-2666C11D-16GTXD kit (Hynix MFR), and the fact that the mobo has one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (for a graphics card) and one PCIe 2.0 x16 @ x4 (the other 5 don't count); clearly, it's either this SSD or the upcoming M7e (if I were to wait that long), which will be using the same controller and NAND.

Also, ta for offering to let us know how installation goes for you, plus for looking into the speed anomaly, to boot (bad pun gleefully intended! ). Being an enthusiast, not an engineer, it's a mystery to me why there should be such variation in write speeds of those mid-sized files. I'd hazard, though, that it's down to either the controller or the firmware...

I do want to apologise to Nathan for not including in my previous post the graphs from his review of a few days ago, of two 480GB Predators in a RAID0 (striped) array. (It failed to turn up in my Web-searching for more new Predator reviews Monday, but using a slightly different search-term string Thursday, there it was! ) It includes both ATTO and AS SSD graphs, which show much the same things seen up to this point: http://www.legitreviews.com/hyperx-pred ... 0_161457/3.

But, regardless of the performance details I've focussed on in my posts, let me be clear about one thing -- a pair o' striped Predators sure snarls! (Maybe that should be known collectively as a Tiger! Say, Kingston -- two M.2s on one adaptor... it's something to think about... )

[Apoptosis]

Sorry for the delayed response... Last week i had a family member pass away and then this week it was a family member estate auction taking place, my taxes were due and a million other things in my personal life. I'm also on a deadline to get Legit Reviews mobile friendly by April 21st before Google changes their SEO algorithm to drop unfriendly mobile sites. So I have the WP theme for the main site being re-done as we speak.

I've been revamping my SSD performance tests and built a entirely new system over the past week to test SSDs. I have a stack of SSDs waiting on me to figure out what to do. I've brought back IOMeter testing and will be looking at mixed workload performance and here are the results of the HyperX Predator 480GB M.2 PCIe SSD.

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I see the performance dip you are talking about and am currently looking into it!

[Coughie]

Last week i had a family member pass away...

First, you have my condolences -- I know from experience what that can be like...

But, it's an excellent thing, IMO, that you're jumping into the fray, and applying your expertise and spiffy new SSD-rig to the issue. I feel that I've about said my piece, already , and am very glad to pass the baton on to the real techs-perts!

I do have one other thing to add, though, and that is to point out that for the next year or more, till AMD implements PCIe upgrades for desktops that go beyond Kaveri's capabilities, PCIe 2.0 x4 SSDs are crucial to getting the most out of APU-based systems. I'd like to see Predator evaluated on a system like mine (wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- any punters keen?) That would give considerably more dimension to the benchmarking field -- after all, AMD constitutes, brand-wise, half of the consumer/desktop market, and their HSA/APU processors operate very differently from FX and i7/i5/i3 CPUs, with much higher memory bandwidth/speed needs, etc., and an interactive relationship between SDRAM speed and APU OC ability, so, who knows what would be revealed by playing with all those relationships?! (Okay, okay! )

[Calamar]

You're lucky enough to work around a new platform UEFI compatible G1.Sniper A88X. I would then recommend you to look for samsungs m2 disks instead. 951 is in both AHCI or NVMe flavours. I don't know about AMD BIOSes versioning, but with enough modern UEFI version you should clearly go for NVMe!
I wish I could go for the intel 750 or the 951 but, although may be usable in my old rampage II extreme, can't be used as boot drive. Look for intel 750 PCIe!!
I will have to face with the pcie 2 overhead anyway but its still cheaper than buying a whole new rig. Until graphic cards don't show full pcie 3 16x saturation and I don't see a reason why my intel i7-920@4,1 has to be replaced.

The second option is to use modded bios for raid0 trim and buy a couple of samsung 840 or 850 pro (doesn't matter cause will work on sata II ports).

Finally remember that those very high speed transfers are not as important as 4k read/write speed with QD0 which is the most common use.

[Apoptosis]

You're lucky enough to work around a new platform UEFI compatible G1.Sniper A88X. I would then recommend you to look for samsungs m2 disks instead. 951 is in both AHCI or NVMe flavours. I don't know about AMD BIOSes versioning, but with enough modern UEFI version you should clearly go for NVMe!
I wish I could go for the intel 750 or the 951 but although may be usable in my old rampage II extreme can't be used as boot drive. Look for intel 750 PCIe.
I will have to face with the pcie 2 overhead anyway but its still cheaper to buy a whole new rig. Until graphic cards don't show full pcie 3 16x saturation and I don't see why my intel i7-920@4,1 has to be replaced.

The second option is to used modded bios for raid0 trim and buy a couple of samsung 840 or 850 pro (doesn't matter cause will work on sata II ports).

Finally remember that those very high speed transfers are not as important as 4k read/write speed with QD0 which is the most common use.

I have reached out to Kingston on the performance concerns you and others have brought up as they are the ones that can best answer that.

951 is on the bench now... I have a few of them here and some Intel 750's

Updated benchmark results:

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Also did some temperature testing over time... Need to line up the iometer data with my time log, but it's a start...

Doing worst case temperature testing as well. This is where I do a 128KB sequential write to the drive across the entirety of drive for 15 minutes. Thinking about including the 15 minute run and then the time it takes to cool down to the starting point. The problem I'm running into is that some drives like the Plextor M6e doesn't have a sensor built-in for temperature recording and external probes are far from consistent due to the varying drives, labels and so on. The Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB M.2 PCIe SSD is shown below. It his 79C in just 5 minutes of heavy writes!

[Calamar]

I'm sure thats why the plextor began to use passive cooling, and the intel too. Its the era of passive coolers for hard drives, like the old raptors.

That coul be a reason for the inconsistencies? A temperature aware firmware that slows down disk if hits a certain temperature? I already had the idea to use passive cooling on the predator (if it ever works), I had some spare heatsinks for it.

[Apoptosis]

I'm sure thats why the plextor began to use passive cooling, and the intel too. Its the era of passive coolers for hard drives, like the old raptors.

That coul be a reason for the inconsistencies? A temperature aware firmware that slows down disk if hits a certain temperature? I already had the idea to use passive cooling on the predator (if it ever works), I had some spare heatsinks for it.

Yes, I think on some drives. The Samsung SM951 overheats on my in under 3 minutes flat without a fan on it. With a fan the performance it 'normal' and the drive doesn't throttle. I spent 2 days testing a couple drives and re-did all the testing again for 2 more days to ensure the numbers were correct and that no throttling is taking place. I'm writing the Samsung SM951 review now, so I might have it up today or tomorrow depending on how much time I get. It's a nice revamp from the old SSD testing we used to do, but I have more planned. Some of the real world testing isn't as repeatable as I wanted it to be, so I have scrapped some of that for now just to get reviews out the door and will reevaluate that down the road.

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