ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO disk benchmark is a Windows-based utility for testing storage performance of any storage drive or controller. We use the default benchmark setup.
M.2 PCIe Performance
For M.2 testing we use a Toshiba OCZ RD400 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD.
M.2 performance was the maximum the drive was capable of and thermal throttling was prevented by the thermal cooling solution. After ten minutes of constant ATTO load we still weren't able to hit the throttling threshold of the Toshiba RD400.
USB Performance
We test USB 3.0 and 3.1 performance using a pair of Transcend SSD370S 512GB SSDs in RAID 0 connected to an Icy Box RD2253-U31 2-bay USB 3.1 enclosure powered by an ASMedia ASM1352R controller.
USB 3.0 performance was as expected, with no issues present, while this Gigabyte board doesn't have USB 3.1 for us to test.
SATA 6Gbps Performance
For SATA 6Gbps testing we use an OCZ Trion 150 480GB SSD.
SATA performance was also standard.
Audio
Rightmark Audio Analyser is a freeware benchmarking utility designed to objectively test the performance characteristics of audio solutions. We setup a line-in line-out loop and execute the record/playback test before generating the results report you see below. A sampling mode of 24-bit, 192 kHz is tested where available. If unavailable the closest alternative operating mode available is used and clearly marked.
Audio performance matches with what we've seen from most other motherboards using the Z270, Z370 and X299 chipsets since nearly all of these motherboards use the Realtek ALC1220 audio processor.