Being able to set 3-3-3-9-1T gave us excellent performance, even though we left everything else to auto. It seems as though MSI has tuned this motherboard to be extremely solid and every pair of memory modules we installed in it ran with no problems. Both Everest and Sisoft say that the MSI is not only faster but lower latency too.
Drive Performance:
A 74GB Western Digital Raptor hard drive was used for SATA testing and a 500GB Seagate eSATA Hard Drive was used for eSATA testing (where applicable). We recorded the average read speeds in all cases using HD Tach 3.0.1.0's 8MB zone test.
SATA Hard Drive Performance
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zone Test, Average Read
MSI K9A2 CF
Gigabyte GA790FX-DQ6
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
64.3
64.3
64.3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
MB/s
With no eSATA onboard we're limited to just testing the four SATA ports, of which, work just fine!