Intel Z97 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI
Intel Z97 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance Testing
There are a number of different Super Speed USB 3.0 host controllers out there. In order to know which ones perform the best we run a series of tests that will put the controller through the ringer and see how it comes out on the other side. Each of our motherboards uses a different Super Speed USB 3.0 controller and you can find the below.
CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for drives and enables rapid measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Note that CDM only supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with a queue depth of 32 (as noted) for the last listed benchmark score. This can skew some results in favor of controllers that also do not support NCQ.
Testing of the USB3 was done using the “Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station . The drive used was an Corsair Force GT 240Gb SSD.
Benchmark Results: The BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE stepped up to the plate and took the top spot of the three boards in CrystalDiskMark during our SuperSpeed USB 3.0 testing today. The Hi-Fi Z97WE hit an average sequential read of 422.1MB/s, a hair faster then the MSI Z97 Gaming 7 that hit 421.9MB/s. The GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H was the slowest of the three boards with a sequential read of 408.2MB/s.
HD Tune Pro 5.00 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.
Intel Z87 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 HD Tune 5.50 Read Benchmark Results
Intel Z87 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 HD Tune 5.50 Write Benchmark Results
Testing of the USB3 was done using the “Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station . The drive used was an Corsair Force GT 240Gb SSD.
Benchmark Results: All three of our boards were spot on where they should be. The GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H took the high marks for the day with an average read at 250MB/s and average write of 231.6MB/s while the MSI Z97 Gaming 7 was the slowest of our boards with an average read of 236.5MB/s and an average write of 218.0MB/s. The BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE we sitting pretty between the other boards with an average read of 239.0MB/s and average write of 227.2MB/s.