SATA Performance

As mentioned earlier, the G1.Sniper2 receives additional SATA 6Gb/s support from the Marvell 88SE9172 controller. We're a bit disappointed this because as a "no compromise" kind of board, we feel it deserves the faster 88SE9182 chip.

The G1.Sniper2 was not as quick as the Extreme4 when measuring the Z68 chipset's performance in our file copy test, providing a maximum throughput of 297MB/s versus 321MB/s. Nonetheless, the Z68 chipset was considerably faster than the Marvell 88SE9172 which maxed out at just 215MB/s, making it the slowest SATA 6Gb/s solution tested.

Gigabyte's new board rebounded in our game copy test, delivering a maximum throughput of 389MB/s – 9MB/s ahead of the Extreme4. The 88SE9172 controller came second to last, pumping 316MB/s.

The G1.Sniper2 blitzed the CrystalDiskMark sequential read/write benchmark, delivering the best read result by far with a throughput of 513MB/s. Marvell's chip was toward the bottom again with 370MB/s.