MSI Big Bang XPower II Motherboard Review

Intel X79 SATA III 6Gbps Performance

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.

The SATA III 6Gbps Testing was done using a Corsair Force GT 240GB Solid State Drive.

Benchmark Results: The MSI Big Bang XPower II Sequential Read speed was a little on the low side compared to some of our boards today. The Big Bang XPower II gave us a sequential read speed of 485.6 MB/s. Our top performer, the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme saw a performance of 508.6MB/s. There’s a difference of 23MB/s between the two boards. The Sequential Write of 303.4MB/s is right in the thick of the write speeds of all of our boards which range from 302.1MB/s to 306MB/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.

MSI Big Bang XPower II HD Tune Pro 4.61 Write Benchmark Results

MSI Big Bang XPower II HD Tune Pro 4.61 Read Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: The MSI Big Bang XPower II performance in HD Tune is comparable to what we saw in CrystalDiskMark. The Average Read was 490.8MB/s which is the lowest that we have seen so far, but the margin between the boards is less at only 15.3MB/s. The Average Write of the Big Bang XPower II was a much stronger showing for the board. With an Average Write of 464.0MB/s it was the third fastest of our motherboards, behind the ASUS R4E (475.7MB/s) and the GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 (466.2MB/s).