USB 3.0 and SATA 6G preview
PC Perspective got their hands on a sample ASUS motherboard and add-in cards that are capable of connecting to SATA 6G and USB 3.0 devices. Although the SATA 6G performance is so so, I’m very excited to see more from USB 3.0. This tech is pretty impressive, below is what PC Perspective had to say about it.
USB 3.0 turned out to be much more impressive out of the gate – transfer rates were easily four times faster than USB 2.0 using the hard drive and dock. Going from 31 MB/s to over 100 MB/s will definitely be a noticeable gain in real world performance and the 150 MB/s we saw when the Intel SSD was in the USB 3.0 dock shows that there is more room up the scale.
I have to admit I was disappointed to see that the USB 3.0 speeds seemed to top out where they did – when attached to the P55 chipset the Intel SSD was able to get get burst speeds in the 250 MB/s range and consistent read speeds near 180 MB/s. With the ASUS implementation of the NEC 720200 controller our limit seems to be 150 MB/s. Because there are so many new variable in this test though including the early sample of the USB 3.0 hard drive dock it is tough to see which component might be at fault for this.
To be sure, 150 MB/s is a HUGE gain over current USB 2.0 speeds of 35 MB/s or so and anyone that is dependent on external storage or any streaming data over USB connections is going to love the bandwidth increase we are seeing today. Keep in mind that the USB 2.0 controller on the P55 chipset has had more than 9 years to evolve to where it is at today while this is the first publicly available implementation of USB 3.0. We will surely see more speed as the months and years progress, but for now I have to say that I am ready for USB 3.0 accessories to hit the shelves.
I want to see mass adoption of USB 3.0 right away starting with Apple hardware. Pretty please Mr. Jobs! Light Peak will be the future but in the mean time USB 3.0 will make hardware purchases much easier to swallow.