Storage performance
We're also including storage tests this time around. M.2 performance is evaluated by the PCIe-based Plextor PX-G256M6e M.2 drive. The lack of performance difference between motherboards is solely down to the drive not being fast enough to saturate the bandwidth of boards using the slower M.2 implementation.
Gigabyte uses two-lane M.2 (1GB/s), but ASRock and Asus opts for four-lane PCIe 3.0 M.2 for a potential 4GB/s bandwidth. Samsung's XP941 M.2 SSD does indeed use a PCIe x4 interface, enabling the ASRock implementation to strut its stuff, as do a few SandForce SF3700 drives slowly coming to market.
SATA and USB read and write performance is reliant on the X99 chipset, so it's no surprise to see nigh-on identical results.
