GIGABYTE G1.SNIPER2 Intel Z68 Motherboard Review

Super Speed 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.

• GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2 – 2 x Etron EJ168 chips
• ASUS ROG Maximus IV Extreme-Z – NEC USB 3.0 controller
• ASUS ROG Maximus IV Gene-Z – ASMedia USB 3.0 controller

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 OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD.

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2 uses a pair of Etron EJ168 USB 3.0 controllers, these proved to be faster than either the ASMedia chip on the ASUS ROG Maximus IV Gene-Z or the NEC chip on the ASUS ROG Maximus IV Extreme-Z. The Sniper 2 was able to average 242.6MB/s sequential read while the fastest ASUS averaged 233.5MB/s sequential read. The Sniper 2 sequential write speed of 173.0MB/s was right on par with the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z sequential write of 173.1MB/s. The 4K numbers of the GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2 were significantly faster. The 4K Read was 31.05MB/s while the fastest from our ASUS boards was 25.17MB/s. This is an improvement of 23.4%. The 4K write of 80.28MB/s was 28.8% faster than the ASUS ROG Maximus IV Gene-Z 4K write of 62.34MB/s.

HD Tune Pro 4.01 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.

Testing of the USB3 was done using the Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station. The drive used was an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD.

Benchmark Results: In HD Tune the GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2 didn’t do quite as well as during CrystalDiskMark. The average read fell to the second spot in the charts. With an average read of 235.4MB/s it was edged out by the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z which had an average read speed of 249.0MB/s. The Sniper 2 continued this trend with the average write speed. The Sniper 2 was able to average 221.4MB/s while the Gene-Z took the honors with 227.5MB/s.