BIOSTAR TPower X79 Motherboard Review

Intel X79 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance

Intel X79 Motherboard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Controller Chips:

• BIOSTAR TPower X79 – ASMedia ASM1042 USB 3.0 controller
• ASRock X79 Extreme9 – Texas Instruments TUSB7340 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Controller
• ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme – Texas Instruments TUSB7340 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Controller
• ASUS Rampage IV Extreme – ASMedia ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Controller
• GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 – Fresco FL1009 SuperSpeed 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.

The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 performance testing was done using a Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD.

Benchmark Results: The BIOSTAR TPower X79 uses the same ASMedia AMD1042 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 controller that the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme uses. To date, the ASMedia ASM1042 is the top performing controller that we have come across! The BIOSTAR TPower X79 was able to average 219.1MB/s sequential read and 237.0MB/s sequential write. This is only 3.6MB/s behind the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme average write and 1.7MB/s behind the average write. This is the closest competitor to the ASUS R4E we have seen so far, everything else has been a minimum of 10MB/s read (some as much as 34MB/s behind), and 36MB/s (some as much as 100MB/s down) behind in the average write!

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.

BIOSTAR TPower X79 HD Tune Pro 4.61 Write Benchmark Results

BIOSTAR TPower X79 HD Tune Pro 4.61 Read Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: The BIOSTAR TPower X79 continues to impress us in HD Tune 4.61! The average read was 233.1MB/s which is 1.2MB/s behind the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme and the average write was 243.6MB/s which is .6MB/s behind the performance of the ASUS R4E!