Peripheral, and Thunderbolt performance
Thunderbolt evaluation
We used a Western Digital VelociRaptor Duo external drive storage and ran one of the 1TB, 3.5in, 10,000RPM (WD1000DHTZ) drives connected by Thunderbolt and, representing the gold standard, directly attached to the SATA 6Gbps port.
MSI's peripherals' performance is either at the top of the two-board charts or at the bottom. There's not a huge deal of variation on any test, however.