Drive and Audio Performance Results

Our drive and audio testing differs a bit from the rest of our testing, for several reasons. First of all, when it comes to drive performance comparison, differences between the P55 and P67 chipsets do leave the P55 platform with a distinct disadvantage, such that we have excluded those results from our reporting. And finally, with audio, we do not list any numbers except for those reported by the product we are testing in order to provide the most information possible, as each audio CODEC will behave quite differently, and each board does not employ the same CODEC. As such, there is no standard we can use other than the numbers themselves. You can always check our other motherboard reviews in order to make direct comparisons to audio performance.

We've tested each drive interface separately, in order to provide the most complete numbers possible. Employing HDTune Pro for all of the testing, we tested each drive outside of the OS environment, using a separate OS on a separate drive, although we do use drives with a fair amount of data on them to simulate performance in real-world situations. For audio, we've changed how we report the numbers provided, using screenshots from the textual results that RMAA provides.

HDTune Pro (SATA2)

We noticed a divergence from the rest of the numbers when testing drive performance, with our ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z matched in second place with a bunch of other products.

HDTune Pro (SATA 6Gb/s)

SATA 6 Gb/s again showed quite decent performance, although not high in the chart, but with less than three tenths of a megabyte difference from the best result.

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

USB 3.0 drive performance proved to put the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z right near the very bottom of the pile, a very much unexpected result.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

In the RightMark Audio Analyzer testing, the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z performed admirably, getting an overall result of "Good", but it's worth noting that the "Noise Level" and "Dynamic Range" results are some of the best we've seen yet.