Intel Z97 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI

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-UD5H, MSI Z97 Gaming 7, and BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE were all within 1.6MB/s of each other during the read tests and 1.8MB/s during the sequential write tests. When we are hitting speeds of ~526MB/s read, 1.6MB/s is a variance of only .3% and is within any margin of error.

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 BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE and the MSI Z97 Gaming 7 had average reads of 438.0MB/s and 436.4MB/s respectively. The GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H fell to 404.6MB/s, which is right on par with the other GIGABYTE motherboards in the charts.

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!