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. For audio, we've changed how we report the numbers provided, using screenshots from the textual results that RMAA provides.

I recently retested all previous products with newer drives, all three using SSDs, two in SATA 3 Gb/s format, and one in SATA 6 Gb/s format. I also replaced the external USB 3.0 enclosure with a newer, and much faster unit, into which I installed a Corsair F60 SATA 3 Gb/s SSD. Overall I have found there to be very little difference from product to product by updating drives, as the results are very similar, albeit much higher, but testing with current drives of course, makes so much more sense, and does save some time in the testing process too. With many SSDs costing about one dollar per Gigabyte, they are something that has, to me, become a neccesary, and critical part in building performance-oriented systems. If you don't own one already, you are missing out on A LOT, and should check out TPU's own SSD reviews, found HERE.

HDTune Pro (SATA2)

HDTune Pro scored the ZOTAC A75-ITX WiFi right with the top results, although it does seem fairly far down the list.

HDTune Pro (SATA 6Gb/s)

SATA 6 Gb/s also showed quite decent performance, with the second highest spot again claimed by the A75-ITX WiFi, along with four other boards with Intel's latest chipsets.

HDTune Pro (USB3.0)

USB 3.0 performance is much more varied than performance from SATA 3 Gb/s and SATA 6Gb/s, due to the many different controllers on the market today. Our Corsair F60 seems to push the USB 3.0 external dock I use to the limit. Sometimes reaching over 200 MB/s! Here again, the ZOTAC A75-ITX WiFi put out very decent results, but not quite so close to the top as for SATA interfaces.

RightMark Audio Analyzer

ZOTAC uses the same ALC892 CODEC as we saw in many reviews, employed by ASUS on the P8P67 PRO, the ASUS M5A97 EVO, and by ECS on the P67H2-A2. While the audio performance was fairly decent to our ears, Rightmark Audio Analyzer did show audio quality similar to the other ALC892 results, fairly decent indeed, but considering this is intended to be used for HTPCs, it is also very important.