Network
Last but not least I wanted to see how the Killer NIC would perform. To do this I ran the Passmark Advanced Network Benchmark using a server in another room (across two switches). I use the average result for comparison. As we can see the two other boards using the same NIC perform a little better but even being the slowest Killer NIC out of the bunch is still faster than the two boards with Intel NICs. In the past I would have been worried about the Killer NIC holding up over time but it seems the failures I experienced early on with the first few Killer NICs have been fixed and I haven’t had any issues in years now.
Motherboard | Average Network Speed |
MSI Z170A Gaming M5 | 873.0 |
Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7 |
Intel 760.0 Killer 922.4 |
MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC | 578.5 |
Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 | 816.9 |