Wow, lots of widely differing opinions.
I personally owned both a Savage and a Tikka at the same time. Both shot fine (Tikka actually shoots great), but beyond that they weren't really comparable. The Savage had poor machining, loose tolerances, and lots of rough parts. Getting it to feed reliably took some work. The Tikka is tight, smooth, feeds anything and shoots almost all 180 gr loads to the same POA.
The stock on the savage was very soft flexible synthetic, while the Tikka was stiffer and much better quality material. Design wise, I also like the Tikka better, as it uses a bare minimum of moving parts, compared the the Savages more complicated modular design. Another thing I have grown to like about the Tikka is that closed top action. Although I thought it was going to by annoying at first, I found that it very effectively seals out snow, ice, mud, etc from getting inside my action. Since I do a lot of winter hunting, this is a big perk to me. The Savage other the other hand had some big gaps around the bolt that would let snow into the magazine and left lug rail. The Tikka bolts also maintain their "slickness" in subzero temps better than any other rifle action I've tried, including classics like the per-64 win.
Savages aren't junk, and Tikkas aren't perfect... but I'd take the Tikka 10 times out of 10 for my uses. Mine has seen plenty of crummy weather, and high mountains and is my go-to gun for everything I hunt.
Dangerous game....
-20 on this day...
As a side note, beware the "package" scope on the Savage or any other gun. The ones I've seen have been total garbage.
Yk