Storage 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 storage 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 P67 board coming out top here using our SATA2 test drive.

HDTune Pro (SATA3)

SATA 6 Gbps, on the other hand, proved to show the Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 on top, as expected. Gigabyte really has done a good job with the P67A-UD4-B3.

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

USB 3.0 drive performance again put the P67A-UD4-B3 on top, but because of the different controllers used between our two P67-based boards, this performance difference was something wholey expected. We would have been concerned if this specific test provided different numbers, but the P67A-UD4-B3 proved its worth yet again.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

Like the rest of the performance numbers shown here, the Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 once again finished in first place, with RightMark Audio showing fantastic numbers that really reflected what our ears heard when playing games with members on the TPU community. We noticed little to no audio distortion even with the volume slider maxed out, and even so, there was very little background noise noticed, showing that the Gigabyte engineers definitely spent time with each and every part of the board design, something that really shows with just a cursory visual glance thanks to the new color scheme. Well done, Gigabyte, well done indeed!