Performance Tests

To see how the board performs we compared it to a µATX MSI H55M-E33 board and ran a couple of benchmarks, including SuperPi, Cinebench 11.5 and Lightsmark.

We've also tested the power draw during idle, 100% load en full HD playback.

All the benchmarks where run under Windows 7 64bit.

Tests where done using the following hardware

CPU	Intel Core i3 530
Memory	Corsair Dominator 4GB DDR3
HDD	Western Digital Green 1TB
GPU	Intel Core i3 530 IGP
PSU	Gigabyte 160W GE-T160U-E2

Cinebench




The Gigabyte board is slightly faster than the MSI H55 board, but results are very close.

SuperPi 1M



Also in SuperPi 1M, the results between the boards are very close, in favor of the Gigabyte H55N-USB3.

Lightsmark 2008



Even though Lightsmark relies mainly on the gpu, we can find a very small difference between the two boards.

Powerdraw

To test the power draw we've connected a Cresta power meter to see what the power draw was when the system was running in idle, under load and during the playback of a 1080P movie using the GPU's hardware acceleration.
We've equipped the MSI H55M-E33 with an USB3.0 add-on card, the Gigabyte GA-USB3.0. We didn't install any power saving utility from either manufacturer, to see what the capabilities of the hardware are.



Only during HD playback the Gigabyte uses less power than the MSI, in idle and load the MSI uses a few Watts less than the Gigabyte, although it isn't a dramatically large difference. The power draw of the USB3.0 add-on card is only 1 Watt, so without this card, the MSI uses 1 Watt less than shown in the graphs.