GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 Motherboard Review

Intel X79 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance

Intel X79 Motherboard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Controller Chips:

• 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 GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 uses a Fresco FL1009 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Controller, the performance of the Fresco USB 3.0 controller wasn’t quite up to par with the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme ASMedia ASM1042 USB 3.0 controller. The GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 averaged 209.5MB/s sequential read and 202.5MB/s sequential write. This was 13.2MB/s slower read than the ASUS R4E and 36.2MB/s slower write. The 4K reads of 20.43MB/s was 2.28MB/s sower than the ASUS Rampage and the 4K write speed of 33.94MB/s was 15.42MB/s behind the ASUS R4E write speed of 49.36MB/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.

ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme Intel X79 HD Tune Pro 4.61 Write Benchmark Results

ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme Intel X79 HD Tune Pro 4.61 Read Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: We are seeing a similar pattern in HD Tune 4.61. The GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 had a solid showing of 202.3MB/s average read, though it was significantly slower than the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme average read of 234.3MB/s. The average write of 200.1MB/s on the GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 was 44.1MB/s slower than the ASUS R4E.