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 one another, as most do provide external drive-controllers which make 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 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 in audio performance.

We 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 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 (SATA2)

HDTune Pro (SATA 6Gb/s)

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

The Gigabyte Z77N-WiFi posted pretty average SATA 3 Gb/s and SATA 6 Gb/s results - decent performance, but nothing to brag about. When it comes to USB 3.0, however, the Gigabyte Z77N-WiFi posted the best results I have ever seen, and that by a pretty good margin. That's exactly the mix of driver performance necessary for the market Gigabyte designed this board around; users with mITX systems are more likely to use external drives for storage because most cases of this form factor have severe internal space limitations.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

RightMark Audio Analyzer testing results are pretty normal, but I found overall volume levels to be a bit lower than I had hoped for, and it shows in the above tests using a dynamic testing range of 85.8 dB. Well, it is still nothing to worry about, since its frequency response was rated well.