Benchmarks: Storage
Asus' Z97 brings with it SATA Express and M.2 support, with both riding off the limited PCIe lanes from the chipset. It's worth investigating performance, so Asus sent us the SATA Express-compatible 256GB Hyper Express SSD, and we tested the M.2 speed with a 256GB Plextor M6e drive.
We're not seeing huge uplifts over SATA 6Gbps performance when using the additional Hyper Express drive or slot-in M.2 SSD. Running ATTO increases the numbers to around 800MB/s peak on both counts but, given the increased write performance, it's just about possible to discern the difference between these drives and a Crucial M500 SATA 6Gbps SSD when engaging in multi-GB sustained writes.
SATA and USB 3.0 performance |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asus Z97-A | |||||
Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H |
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| SATA read (MB/s) | 482.1 |
480.4 |
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| SATA write (MB/s) | 250.1 |
249.2 |
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| USB 3.0 read (MB/s) | 208.2 |
200.3 |
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| USB 3.0 write (MB/s) | 88.4 |
86.3 |
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Performance is very predictable across Intel chipsets. Z97 ekes out the tiniest of advantages.
Overclocking
We increased the CPU voltage to 1.25V, DDR3 to 1.65V (keeping timings the same) and graphics core voltage to 1.2V on both boards. Here's what they both achieved.
Overclocking performance |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asus Z97-A | |||||
Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H |
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| CPU (MHz) | 4,400 |
4,375 |
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| Memory (MHz) | 2,200 |
2,167 |
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| IGP (MHz) | 1,650 |
1,680 |
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Overclocking is predominantly limited by the test-chip. The variations in processors is way larger than those of chipsets. Z97 functions very much like Z87, but you new that by now, right?