AkG
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2007
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Feature Testing: Onboard Audio and USB 3.1 Performance
<i> While the Gigabyte Gaming 5 is mainly orientated towards PC enthusiasts, the upgraded onboard audio is one of its main selling features. As such, it behooves us to see exactly what this upgrade brings to the table. To do this we have used RightMark Audio Analyzer.</i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/dr.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/thd.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/noise.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
For the past few generations Gigabyte has provided their customers with excellent onboard sound solutions and the Z170X-Gaming 5 is no exception. While certainly not the best we have seen, it still is extremely potent and more than capable of providing excellent performance for anyone not interested in a dedicated soundcard. More importantly, it is keeping pace with some extremely high end products which is impressive given its price.
For the USB 3.1 device we have used an Asus USB 3.1 enclosure which uses a pair of Samsung 840 EVO 250GB drives, and is powered by an ASMedia ASM1352R chipset.
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/USB31/ports2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>
<i>Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB. </i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/cdm_r.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/cdm_w.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<i>No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter or PCMark is, it cannot really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. All of us here at Hardware Canucks strive to give you the best, most complete picture of a review item’s true capabilities and to this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 10.00GB contiguous file and a folder containing 400 subfolders with a total 12,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (10.00 GB total).
Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found. </i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/copy_sm.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
</div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/copy_lg.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
At this point we thought we knew exactly what this external USB 3.1 device could accomplish and yet in one fell swoop Intel's Alpine Ridge controller has moved the yardsticks. It hasn't done so by a drastic amount but it is obvious that Intel's implementation is slightly better than ASMedia's.
Gigabyte seems to have made the right decision in snubbing ASUS' subsidiary and using this cutting edge discreet controller instead.
Feature Testing: Onboard Audio
<i> While the Gigabyte Gaming 5 is mainly orientated towards PC enthusiasts, the upgraded onboard audio is one of its main selling features. As such, it behooves us to see exactly what this upgrade brings to the table. To do this we have used RightMark Audio Analyzer.</i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/dr.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/thd.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/noise.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
For the past few generations Gigabyte has provided their customers with excellent onboard sound solutions and the Z170X-Gaming 5 is no exception. While certainly not the best we have seen, it still is extremely potent and more than capable of providing excellent performance for anyone not interested in a dedicated soundcard. More importantly, it is keeping pace with some extremely high end products which is impressive given its price.
Feature Testing: USB 3.1 Performance
For the USB 3.1 device we have used an Asus USB 3.1 enclosure which uses a pair of Samsung 840 EVO 250GB drives, and is powered by an ASMedia ASM1352R chipset.
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/USB31/ports2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></div>
Crystal DiskMark
<i>Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB. </i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/cdm_r.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/cdm_w.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
Real World Data Transfers
<i>No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter or PCMark is, it cannot really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. All of us here at Hardware Canucks strive to give you the best, most complete picture of a review item’s true capabilities and to this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 10.00GB contiguous file and a folder containing 400 subfolders with a total 12,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (10.00 GB total).
Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found. </i>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/copy_sm.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
</div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Motherboard/Z170_GB_G5/copy_lg.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> </div>
At this point we thought we knew exactly what this external USB 3.1 device could accomplish and yet in one fell swoop Intel's Alpine Ridge controller has moved the yardsticks. It hasn't done so by a drastic amount but it is obvious that Intel's implementation is slightly better than ASMedia's.
Gigabyte seems to have made the right decision in snubbing ASUS' subsidiary and using this cutting edge discreet controller instead.
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