GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WiFi-BK Intel Z97 Motherboard Review

Intel Z97 SATA III 6Gbps Performance Testing

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 performance testing was completed using a Corsair Force GT 240Gb SATA III 6Gbps SSD.

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WiFi-BK was able to hit an average sequential read in CrystalDiskMark of 529.7MB/s and a Sequential Write of 439.3MB/s. Taking a look at the 4K read and write scores the G1 Gaming motherboard was the fastest out of all of the boards we tested to date.

HD Tune Pro 5.50 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 Z97 HD Tune Pro 5.50 Write Benchmark Results

Intel Z97 HD Tune Pro 5.50 Read Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WiFi-BK was able to take the top spots in HD Tune with an average read of 440.3MB/s and an average write of 328.2MB/s.

Update: Switching over to the High Performance power option, we saw the largest gains in HD Tune. The GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force increased from 347.4MB/s to 403.7MB/s! That’s a gain of 56MB/s on the average read performance. The average write increased by 21MB/s as well!