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.


Gigabyte suffers from the same Lynnfield CPU idle sleep state issue that the Asus does when it comes to SATA performance. Under the BIOS' default settings that aggressively clock the CPU down to save power, it also reduces the SATA bandwidth unless the CPU is loaded. MSI does not seem to suffer this issue as it hits a nice 216MB/sec. However, like the Asus, the Gigabyte board can only muster just under 160MB/sec. Incredibly even these PCI Express-connected SATA chip of the Gigabyte is faster than those ports supplied by the Intel P55 chipset, at 182MB/sec.

Disabling the CPU sleep states, forcing it to run at its native speed all the time, gives the best SATA performance from the Intel P55 ports, so be wary those of you with SSDs and RAID-0 setups. This is especially annoying, as disabling the sleep states of a Lynnfield CPU means you can't use Turbo Boost (rev 2) which is actually very good. Still, you have to disable Turbo Boost (rev 2) when overclocking, so this might not be a big issue anyway.

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.


Unlike SATA, USB performance from the Gigabyte is exceptional at 37.4MB/sec, matching the Asus board and exceeding the MSI by a couple of MB/sec. It was consistently the fastest board we've seen to date in this test.