After doing the USB benchmarks and seeing how far ahead the Z97-A was in performance I was a little disappointed when I ran our network benchmark. Asus did include an Intel NIC but its performance wasn’t anything to write home about, especially when compared to the Gaming 5. This is still worlds above wireless and almost no one will notice the difference in day to day usage, but this is the only documented benchmark where the Z97-A performed considerably less than the Gaming 5 (audio testing didn’t have a benchmark).
Hello...you stated, "I was a little disappointed in the network performance of the Intel NIC on the Z97-A...this is to be expected at a price point like the Z97-A’s though". I've been looking at getting the ASUS Z97 Deluxe which is almost twice as much as the -A version @ $275 and it uses the same Intel I218-V NIC. Even the $350 Z97 Deluxe NFC/WLC uses the same NIC as the Z97-A. Soooo...no matter what price point I'm at in this line of ASUS motherboards, I can't get very good network performance???
Actually in later testing I found this to be a specific issue only with the model of switch that we do our testing on. You can find a little more information here
