MSI Z97S SLI Plus Review

Written by Antony Leather

July 23, 2014 | 08:51

Tags: #best-z97-motherboard #devils-canyon #lga1150 #z97

Companies: #haswell #msi

SATA and M.2 Performance

Website: ATTO Disk Benchmark

We tested the SATA and performance with an OCZ Vector 150 240GB, as this is one of the fastest SSDs we've ever tested, and it can saturate the bandwidth of SATA 6Gbps ports.

For the M.2 port, we used a Plextor PX-G256M6e SSD. This is rated at 770MB/sec read and 580MB/sec write speeds - not quite saturating the M.2 interface but we've been unable to get our mitts on anything faster for long term testing as the interface is still in its infancy.

We use ATTO Disk Benchmark, and take the read and write speeds for 1,024KB data chunks.


SATA 6Gbps and M.2 Performance

ATTO Disk Benchmark

  • MSI Z97M Gaming (Intel Z97 M.2)
  • MSI Z97S SLI Plus (Intel Z97 M.2)
  • Asus Maximus VII Gene (Intel Z97 M.2)
  • Asus Maximus VI Impact (Intel Z87)
  • Asus Maximus VII Gene (Intel Z97)
  • Asus Maximus VII Ranger (Intel Z97)
  • MSI Gaming 7 (Intel Z97)
  • ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer (Intel Z97)
  • Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI (Intel Z97)
  • MSI Z97S SLI Plus (Intel Z97)
  • MSI Z97 MPower (Intel Z97)
  • MSI Z97M Gaming (Intel Z97)
  • Asus Maximus VII Hero (Intel Z97)
  • Asus Maximus VII Hero (ASMedia ASM1061)
  • MSI Z97 MPower (ASMedia ASM1061)
  • MSI Gaming 7 (ASMedia ASM1061)
  • MSI Z97S SLI Plus (ASMedia ASM1061)
  • Asus Maximus VII Gene (ASMedia ASM1061)
    • 759
    • 557
    • 758
    • 559
    • 750
    • 559
    • 545
    • 520
    • 542
    • 520
    • 544
    • 522
    • 544
    • 520
    • 544
    • 519
    • 544
    • 519
    • 543
    • 520
    • 543
    • 516
    • 542
    • 520
    • 542
    • 517
    • 388
    • 385
    • 386
    • 381
    • 382
    • 382
    • 381
    • 379
    • 377
    • 376
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
MB/sec, higher is better
  • Read
  • Write

Power Consumption

Website: Prime95

To see how much power the motherboard consumes at idle and load and while at stock speeds and when overlcocked, we use Prime95 to stress the CPU to its limits, putting all eight cores of our Core i7-4770K test CPU under load and allowing the power readout to level off.

Power Consumption (Idle)

Windows Aero enabled

  • MSI Z97M Gaming
  • MSI Z97S SLI Plus
  • Asus Maximus VII Gene
  • MSI Z97 MPower
  • Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI
  • MSI Gaming 7
  • ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer
  • Asus Maximus VII Ranger
  • Asus Maximus VII Hero
    • 44
    • 52
    • 47
    • 71
    • 49
    • 58
    • 50
    • 57
    • 51
    • 54
    • 53
    • 62
    • 55
    • 59
    • 55
    • 61
    • 57
    • 57
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Watts, lower is better
  • Stock Speed
  • Overclocked

Power Consumption (Load)

Windows Aero enabled

  • MSI Z97M Gaming
  • Asus Maximus VII Ranger
  • Asus Maximus VII Gene
  • MSI Z97 MPower
  • MSI Z97S SLI Plus
  • Asus Maximus VII Hero
  • Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI
  • MSI Gaming 7
  • ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer
    • 118
    • 197
    • 119
    • 180
    • 120
    • 189
    • 120
    • 184
    • 121
    • 195
    • 122
    • 180
    • 122
    • 193
    • 124
    • 182
    • 136
    • 194
0
50
100
150
200
Watts, lower is better
  • Stock Speed
  • Overclocked

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