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 comparisons, nearly every platform on the market is very close to all the others because most provide external drive controllers, making the numbers offered very platform agnostic. And finally, with audio, we do not list any numbers except for those reported by the product we are testing. This is to provide the most information possible, as each audio CODEC will behave quite differently. Many boards also employ 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 to make direct comparisons in audio performance.

We tested each drive interface separately in order to provide you with numbers that are as complete as possible. Employing HDTune Pro for all of the testing, we tested each drive outside of the OS environment through a separate OS on a separate drive. However, we put a fair amount of data on both the Crucial M4 drives (60% full) to simulate performance in real-world situations. Also new is that all USB 3.0 testing is done via the provided front-panel ports rather than the ports on the rear of the board since front-panel ports are more likely to be used. I also no longer test SATA interfaces using a SATA 3 Gb/s drive since SATA 3 Gb/s functionality is now a legacy item.

HDTune Pro (SATA 6Gb/s)

HDTune Pro (USB3.0 Front Panel)

The ASUS Z97-A's SATA performance is decent, but USB 3.0 drive performance is where it really excels. I have to wonder whether the USB 3.0 dock I used imposed some sort of limit here, so I might have to look into replacing it soon. Since this board features SATA Express, I expect ASUS to mostly rely on it and the M.2 interface for superior drive performance. ASUS has already provided me with one of their HyyperExpress drives with two mSATA drives in a RAID configuration. As one would expect of such unreleased technology, at the time of writing, these drives perform best on ASUS products. I don't have numbers to report here at this time, but will add those tests to my testing suite as soon as reasonably possible. There is no point in showing tech the end user cannot purchase, after all.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

Audio results over the back panel are pretty good. My testing method seems to generate a bit of noise, which may be related to the output overpowering my "testing equipment" mostly consisting of a loopback cable.


Results over the front panel are much better and more in line with what I expected. I guess it's time for me to buy some new equipment and cabling to test with since these results are not what I was expecting, and I used the board for a bit. To my ears, everything sounded perfect, but I did notice a bit of added body over the rear ports as compared to the front, which these results don't reflect at all, although using the very basic 10[(x/10)-12] formula, volume is clearly better over the rear.