SATA and eSATA Performance

Website: HD Tach 3.0

We tested the SATA and eSATA performance with an Intel X25-M SSD to maximise the use of the SATA connections and reveal any differences in performance.


P55 SATA performance: excellent. We can't fault that, it maxes out our X25M G1 SSD and leads the table. The other JMicron SATA ports are as useful as a chocolate teapot, and nowhere near as tasty. For an expensive performance motherboard to advertise two SATA 3Gbps ports that are "Speeding HDD", yet, only offer 62 per cent of the bandwidth of a normal SATA 3Gbps port, is quite simply a lie.

Placed higher up the board we accept the (also JMicron powered) white SATA 3Gbps ports, are likely be used by optical drives so don't require the bandwidth, but that's all you'd ever want to use them for as well. 81.6MB/s is pathetic: that's less than ATA100. What is this, 2001?

As far as the Asus Maximus III Formula is concerned, you should only consider it to have six SATA 3Gbps ports.

USB 2.0 Performance

Website: HD Tach 3.0

We tested the USB performance with an Intel X25-M SSD and a SATA to USB adapter to saturate the USB bus in order to look for any performance drops.


On the USB front, Asus pipes into the P55 southbridge very effectively and achieves a superb performance here.