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, as most do provide external drive-controllers which make the numbers offered very platform agnostic. With audio, we also do not list any numbers except for those reported by the product we are testing 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 in audio performance.

We tested each drive interface separately to provide the most complete numbers possible. Employing HDTune Pro for all of the testing, I tested each drive outside of the OS environment with the OS on a separate drive. However, I do use drives with a fair amount of data on the Corsair ForceGT (60% full) to simulate performance in real-world situations, and I also use the same drive to test all interfaces.

HDTune Pro (SATA 6Gb/s)

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

The Biostar Hi-Fi A88W 3D ranked well in terms of USB 3.0 performance, but its SATA 6 Gb/s performance is a bit lower than that of Intel-based products. This may be a result of the FIS-based switching these ports use rather than an artifact of the board's design.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

Audio testing with RightMark Audio Analyzer provided pretty good numbers for theBiostar Hi-Fi A88W 3D. It rated the audio provided by the onboard Realtek CODEC as "Good" and gave a couple sections a "Very Good" rating.