ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

I/O Benchmarks

A first here at Hardware Canucks, we have finally included some basic I/O benchmarks. We love to hear your thoughts and ideas about what to implement and whether we should expand to include LAN and audio tests, so let us know on the forums.

HD Tach 3.0.4 - SATA

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience with an Intel X25-M 80GB G1 solid state drive (SSD) on this motherboard. The long test was run to give a slightly more accurate picture. The test was run three times with the results averaged out.

We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings and this goes double for SSDs; the more important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem.

We also test CPU utilization in order to make sure that there isn't a problem needlessly wasting CPU cycles. Lastly, we have also included the random access time, just as another barometer of overall storage sub-system performance. In both cases, the lower the better.


Although the MSI board exhibited the highest burst speed (and read the description for our thoughts on burst speed), the Maximus III Formula tied with the P7P55D Deluxe for the best average read speed.



All four motherboards pretty much had identical CPU utilization and random access times, however the MIIIF did consistently achieve a slightly lower random access time.

HD Tach 3.0.4 - USB

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience from this motherboard's USB 2.0 ports. In this test, we connected an external 2.5" 5400RPM hard drive to a USB port, ran the test three times and averaged the results. The long test was run to give a slightly more accurate picture.

We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings; the more important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem.

We also test CPU utilization in order to make sure that there isn't a problem needlessly wasting CPU cycles. Lastly, we have also included the random access time, just as another barometer of overall storage sub-system performance. In both cases, the lower the better.


The Maximus III Formula came third in our USB 2.0 performance test, but the difference between all four motherboards is minimal.


Once again, the results are pretty much identical, and the slight variances can be attributed to the benchmark itself.

HD Tach 3.0.4 - eSATA

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience from this motherboard's eSATA port with an Intel X25-M G1 80GB solid state drive. with these hard drives. The long test was run to give a slightly more accurate picture. The test was run three times with the results averaged out.

We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings and this goes double for SSDs; the more important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem.

We also test CPU utilization in order to make sure that there isn't a problem needlessly wasting CPU cycles. Lastly, we have also included the random access time, just as another barometer of overall storage sub-system performance. In both cases, the lower the better.


The Maximus III Formula, P7P55D Deluxe, and P55-GD80 all utilize the same JMicron JMB363 controller for eSATA support, and as such they achieved nearly performance levels. All three were a good deal faster than the Intel DP55KG, which uses by a Marvell 88E6145 controller.


Once again, the ASUS and MSI models are equal, but Intel board has slightly lower CPU utilization.