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SATA
For SATA 6Gb/s testing we use a Kingston HyperX 3K (SandForce SF-2281) SSD.
Z97 SATA performance on the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 is limitless for a modern SATA 6Gbps SSD. The pair of ports provided by ASMedia's ASM1061 chipset are significantly slower than the Z97 connections, although they're also considerably faster than Gigabyte's Marvell choices.
The ASMedia ports will be fine for operating older SSDs that aren't as fast as current devices, or mechanical storage drives when the Z97 connections are used up.
SATA Express
We use an engineering sample of the Asus Hyper Express SSD to test the SATA Express connector's speed.
Using a 2GB transfer length to allow the Asus Hyper Express to flex its muscles, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 delivers strong throughput numbers over its 10Gbps SATA Express connection with SRIS.
We don't have comparison data collected from the same test platform, although the numbers from our recent SATA Express article can be used as a basic reference. We will build up our database of SATA Express performance as we review more Z97 motherboards.
USB 3.0
We tested USB 3.0 performance using the Kingston HyperX 3K SSD connected to a SATA 6Gb/s to USB 3.0 adapter powered by an ASMedia ASM1053 controller.
USB 3.0 performance is where Asus' board really shines. Being the only vendor in today's chart to offer a UASP-activating software tool for our Windows 7-based test system, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 tops the USB 3.0 speed chart by a considerable margin.
Another positive is the strong performance of USB 3.0 connections running from the ASMedia ASM1042AE host controller. Even Asus' ‘secondary' USB 3.0 connections are faster than the offerings from MSI and Gigabyte, who both lack a Windows 7 UASP tool.
Audio
We use RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMMA) to analyse the performance of the motherboard’s onboard audio solution. A sampling mode of 24-bit, 192 kHz was tested.
The Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 uses a Realtek ALC1150-based audio system. Signals are sent along the discrete pathway, with separated left and right tracks, to avoid interference between each audio channel as well as the rest of the board.
Strong audio performance is displayed by the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1. The magnitude of the noise level rating, at 103.2 db(A), is particularly impressive. Strong crosstalk performance is likely to be a by-product of the separated audio tracks for either channel.
