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 to show up any core differences in raw performance.


With no eSATA, we're limited to the six SATA ports from the SB750 southbridge. The DFI stretches the slightest lead over the MSI here so at least that's a bonus.

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.


Typically the USB 2.0 performance for AMD southbridges is very poor, and even though the DFI manages to pull out an extra MB/s over the MSI - a great result for those wanting to run mass storage or large data transfers over USB - it's still less than Intel and Nvidia boards which top out at around 35MB/s. DFI does the best with what it's given though it seems.

Power Consumption

Resetting the BIOS to default settings we used the exact same set of hardware in all our tests below (listed in the test setup page), only changing the motherboard between. By testing at the wall power consumption, we know exactly what kind of typical wattage we'll be paying for.


The DFI board is both power hungry at idle and load compared to MSI, as it's 8W more at idle and 9W at load. Neither board features specific power saving hardware and even though the DFI uses a more advanced northbridge, it actually has less hardware features than the MSI.