Disk Performance:

The SATA read tests were conducted with a 74GB Western Digital Raptor and eSATA using a Seagate 500GB 7200RPM eSATA drive, using HD Tach 3.0.1.0's 8MB zone test. The USB 2.0 tests were done using an ATA133 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drive (model number: 6L160PO) using the same 8MB zone test enclosed in an Icy Box USB 2.0 hard drive caddy. We recorded the average read speeds in all cases.





It's all good apart from the Firewire performance which is somewhat crippled. We saw a similar thing with the Abit IP35 Pro, which was subsequently fixed by a BIOS update within a week or so. It's not an absolutely critical connection because for those doing lots of A/V work will now probably prefer Firewire 800 on a dedicated card anyway, but for those with external drives it might cause a bit of a performance problem. However, if performance was an issue there are two eSATA ports available.