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 through a separate OS on a separate drive. However, we do use drives with a fair amount of data on both the Corsair ForceGT and the Corsair F60 (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)

USB 3.0 performance was good. SATA 6 Gb/s results were really good, showing that there's perhaps more to Intel's Z87 than a first glance may expose!

RightMark Audio Analyzer

It is normal for me to install all software when first setting up a board, since I want to be able to show you all what the board comes with. However, installing the software this time affected my test results, and in a way that was painfully obvious. Once I ran RMAA to test the onboard sound, I found the results to be very unimpressive, but my ears told me a different story. These results are pictured above.


On a fresh OS install, however, the results are far different, and far more in accordance with what my ears told me. Over the past few years I have been reviewing motherboards, I have found many audio-software solutions that only offer two-channel surround processing, like Dolby Headphone and similar technologies, to affect audio testing results in a big way. Many of these software solutions push "out-of-phase" audio through both channels to simulate speakers that are not present, and RMAA picks up on this as poor audio rendering when it really isn't. So, I've included both sets of results here in an effort to clear the air about the subject. The second results relate the audio performance I heard pretty accurately, and let me tell you, the MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING is pretty good. At the same time, while RMAA results show poor results with the software installed, there's nothing really wrong with the audio, and this is a fault of the used testing method in RMAA.