MSI A88X-G45 Gaming Motherboard Review

We use Crystal Disk Mark in the next few tests to test SSD, Hard drives, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 performance.

We use a Western Digital Black 7200 RPM hard drive for this test. Both motherboards are very similar in performance.

No issue here with USB 2.0. Both motherboards are withing a few points of each other.

Not a whole lot to say here. USB 3.0 performance is right on par.

The next two tests are solo benchmarks. Since the Gigabyte Sniper board did not have a Killer NIC I decided not to pit them against one another. RightMark audio is a solo benchmark as well.

RightMark Audio Analyzer measures sound quality. To set this test up, I used a 12″ 3.5mm loop back plugged into the audio jack labeled as front and the other end plugged into the Line In jack. Volume was turned up to 100% and the Line In level was adjusted until -1dB was read on the scale, the test was run at that point. Overall, according to RMAA the board posted a very good result.

To set up the network test, a single Cisco catalyst 2960G with a blank configuration is used. Each PC is plugged into the switch with a static IP. The MSI A88X-G45 Gaming Motherboard is used as a client. This is the 1st time I’ve tested an integrated Killer network adapter. The test shows that initial traffic starts out at just over 700 Mbps and ramps up to just over 900 Mbps with an average coming in at 913.6 Mbps. What concerns me is the network card’s ability to sustain a constant transfer rate. The peaks and valleys should not be present. Overall transfer rate was acceptable and comes in with in range. With TPC/IP networking a bandwidth loss of 10 to 15% is expected.