Testing (continued):

Performance Test 7.0:

PassMark offers a suite of tests intended to provide an overview of a system's performance, with results provided for all of the key subsystems. Performance Test 7's complete package was executed, and the results are shown for the overall PassMark rating, as well as the rating for each individual component. The units of measure are "Marks", a relative value PassMark implements, and higher is better for all tests.

First up we have the overall PassMark Rating, which shows the two boards being quite comparable at stock speed, and the overclock really doing wonders for the ASUS board.



The CPU Mark results are up next, where the ASUS board drifts a bit behind the Gigabyte board, but not by too much.



2D Graphics performance is enhanced by the overclock, despite the video card settings remaining untouched.



A similar boost is seen on the 3D side of things in the graphics department while overclocked.



Next we have the Memory Mark results, which shows a surprising boost while overclocked, despite the memory not really changing from one state to the next.



Finally we see the Disk Mark results, which don't really show much improvement despite the SATA 6Gbps drive being moved from a 3GBps header to a 6Gbps header. Unless you have an SSD rated for 6Gbps operation, this technology isn't going to take you very far.



Overall, Performance test 7.0 sees the ASUS X58 board as being just slightly behind the Gigabyte model in every category. But, the results are so close there isn't much to get excited about. Apply the overclock to the ASUS board, and you can realize a sizable performance gain in every category as compared to the stock settings!