USB performance
Our USB transfer speed tests were conducted with a USB 2.0/Firewire external hard drive enclosure connected to a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hard drive. We tested with HD Tach 3.01's 8MB zone setting.

USB performance is close, but the Abit board steals a win in the write speed test. Its CPU utilization is lower, as well, although HD Tach's margin of error in that test is +/- 2%.

Firewire performance
Our Firewire transfer speed tests were conducted with the same external enclosure and hard drive as our USB transfer speed tests. Since the Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI lacks an onboard Firewire controller, it'll have to sit this test out.

The P6N SLI is right in the thick of things in our Firewire performance tests, managing to match or beat the performance of more expensive boards.