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.

HDTune Pro (SATA2)

We noticed a divergence from the rest of the numbers when testing drive performance, with our reference ECS P67H2-A2 "B2" board coming out on top here using our SATA2 test drive, and the "B3" revision giving us the lowest numbers so far. We did re-run these tests several times, but were left without an explanation as to why the numbers were so low.

HDTune Pro (SATA 6 Gb/s)

SATA 6 Gb/s showed something quite different, with SATA 6 Gb/s improving with the revision, but still not matching the competitors. Perhaps a sign that the ECS P67H2-A2 still has some hidden potential within the BIOS.

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

USB 3.0 drive performance again put the P67H2-A2 on top, most likely due to it employing the Etron USB 3.0 controllers, much different from the NEC/Renesas products on the other boards. However, although the "B2" and "B3" boards both employ the same controller, the chipset revision clearly has had an effect, and a good one, at that.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

ECS uses the same ALC892 CODEC as we saw in our last review, employed by ASUS on the P8P67 PRO. While the audio performance was fairly decent to our ears, Rightmark Audio Analyzer did notice a drop in audio quality from the other ALC892 result, a product of the circuit design and other components used in the board's audio loop. Again, not the very best, but still more than adequate.