USB 3.0 performance explored - Final Words and Verdict

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/09/2010 03:00 PM [ ] 0 comment(s)

Final Words and verdict

With the introduction of USB 3.0 the industry will move forward to a very fast new interface. Who of you guys have not in the past experienced purchasing a USB 2.0 HDD enclosure and then when copying files you nearly went nuts after seeing how slow USB really is while transferring large files. Well, such times are now over. With an 10x increase of bandwidth everything feels snazzy and fast. Transferring files will be blazingly fast and with much less latency everything feels responsive and swift.

The products we have shown you today are now final, and boy did it make a difference opposed to the results we have shown your ierlier.

On USB 3.0 we measured speeds of 200MB/sec read speeds over the USB 3.0 port is sexy, it still could be a little closer to SATA2 performance though. Perhaps a future driver update from NEC will solve that. But still, this is great performance. using the SSD over USB 3.0 feels fast and snazzy and I can tell you that USB 3.0 is exactly with the doctor ordered alright, especially with fast devices like SSD's.

The ADATA N002 SSD, what a seriously nice SSD that is. With the Indilinx controller and nice phat data cache it's fast and with both USB 3.0 and SATA2 connector so very versatile. The SATA2 performance absolutely is beautiful.

USB 3.0 is -- we can already evangelize it; it won't be long before we'll see massive integration and wide adoption of USB 3.0 on motherboards, really the technology is just too good to not have. If you feel left out with your current USB 2.0 motherboards, then that's where add-on cards like shown today come in.

The simplest MSI Star USB 3.0 will probably sell at like 35 USD and we do expect the USB 3.0/SATA6G to be more expensive at maybe 65 USD due to the extra controller, PLX bridge chip and this advanced design. Obviously once real SATA6G devices become available we'll put it to the test.

So guys, there you have it .. the very first USB 3.0 test done with an actual high-speed storage unit. The final version of the s MSI Star USB 3.0 controller definitely is showing its potential now. We like that very mcuh. If you like this article please digg it.

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