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, nearly every platform on the market is very close to one another. Most platforms provide external drive controllers which means the numbers offered are very much platform agnostic. 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 with each board employing a different 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. However, we do use drives with a fair amount of data on them (60% full) to simulate performance in real-world situations

HDTune Pro (SATA2)

In HDTune Pro SATA 3 Gb/s performance, I found the ASUS Maximus V Formula/ThunderFX to perform quite poorly, ending up in the lower bottom portion of the chart.

HDTune Pro (SATA 6Gb/s)

SATA 6 Gb/s showed a slightly better picture, with the ASUS Maximus V Formula/ThunderFX beating out quite a few other Intel Z77 Express-based products.

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

USB 3.0 drive performance tests are done using the same Corsair F60 drive used to test SATA 3 Gb/s performance, and here I got a surprise, with the ASUS Maximus V Formula/ThunderFX sitting at right on top of the graph, blasting all other results out of existence.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

Here's the results for the onboard SupremeFX CODEC. A pretty average results with nothing worth mentioning. The actual sound was pretty decent once some EQ adjustments were applied, but I found that the volume was quite low through the rear outputs. The supplied amplifier definitely increased the volume for the front panel outputs, but audio quality suffered at the same time.



Meanwhile, with the ThunderFX device connected through USB, the results completely changed, and I could not believe how great the audio was! The volume was still kind of low, but it's not something I'd complain about, considering that the only power supplied to the ThunderFX was through USB. It might pose a problem when trying to push some higher-end headphones.