The fine folks at both
HotHardware and
PC Perspective have run the new
ASUS P7P55D-E Premium motherboard through its paces, which has the particular distinction of handling both USB 3.0 and the up-and-coming SATA 6G through controllers by NEC and Marvell, respectively. Lucky for us, both sites' tests came to similar conclusions. The Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6G drive has almost zero improvement over SATA 3G, other than in some burst speeds due to the fancy cache on the 6G -- the bottleneck here is the drive, not the controller. Meanwhile, USB 3.0 has speeds that are roughly 5 to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 with the same drive, a huge win for fans of external storage the world over. Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30, so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user.
Read - HotHardware
Read - PC Perspective
posted Oct 31st 2009 1:26AM
Wow, thats expensive!
Apple better put this in their next Macs.
more like firewire 1600 or some BS that no vendor supports
Or what? You will stop being the Apple fanboy that you are? Yea, right. I will believe it when I see it.
@streetfights
or like a few years ago adopting as standard on their computers some weird BS that few other people used at the time....USB1?
@ Nohone
hay mate, all I can see here is that someone is hoping for this standard to be adopted by a particular computer company..
The only fanboi I can see in this discussion is you...
Apple was one of the first companies to integrate USB into their Mac line, they have also been using USB 2.0 for years, why would they not integrate USB 3.0. As for SATA 6G, It's almost certain they will integrate it, but you will have to purchase SSD drives to actually take advantage of this new tech, platter drives are becoming more and more of a bottleneck. And even now SSDs aren't at a good enough price point to justify the premium charge for a slight gain in performance. And on a lighter note:
This article fails to mention Firewire 1600 and 3200 as a contender. I for one have always used FireWire versus the slow USB 2.0 standard, I mean you can either go with 480Mbps transfer or 800Mbps tranfers, I think it's obvious which is the right choice, and with Firewire 1600 and 3200 featuring 1.6Gbps and 3.2Gbps transfers,respectively, the decision is clear for me again.
Look around at professional equipment that uses external storage devices and they aren't usually using USB, especially in Video Editting, they either have a server they stay connected to with some sort of storage array, or they have a drive connected via Firewire.
7egend: Erm...yes, I guess the choice is clear. The tech which is out now, and supports 4.8Gbit/s instead of the one that isn't and supports only 1.6 or 3.2Gbit/s.
It is true that firewire has been used in the past for video and audio, though the recent push has been for eSATA, since it pretty much eliminates the added enclosure controller lag. Also, the reason firewire was used instead of USB was because firewire (400) had higher sustained speeds, and virtually no drop outs, while USB had higher burst speeds and was notoriously finicky. Now that USB has a very significant speed advantage (50% over the unreleased Firewire 3200), it's unlikely that the sustained speed will be lower. I have no idea about the dropouts, but if those are improved as well (my guess is yes), the new firewires offer absolutely no benefits over the new USB.
The choice is clear.
"The tech which is out now, and supports 4.8Gbit/s instead of the one that isn't and supports only 1.6 or 3.2Gbit/s.
It is true that firewire has been used in the past for video and audio, though the recent push has been for eSATA, since it pretty much eliminates the added enclosure controller lag."
And idiotically includes no provision for power delivery. That right there, in a relatively recent connector, is unforgivable.
"the new firewires offer absolutely no benefits over the new USB."
You fail to mention the shitload of processor overhead that USB has historically imposed, compared to Firewire's minimal overhead.
What Apple should have done is put ExpressCard slots in its laptops (don't even bother mentioning its presence in their 17-inch barge). But no, that involves some common sense and some thought as to what real-world users want to do with portable computers.
Things like installing wireless-data cards, or interface cards for new standards as they emerge.
It's incredible how Apple finds ways to cripple every one of its products with some glaring design blunders, when they come so close to making all-around winners.
I don't think I've ever been within 100 yards of a device supporting firewire 800, 400 sure, but 800 nope.
The theoretical speed of USB 3 is greater than the theoretical speed of firewire 1600 or 2400 or whatever, yes. However, FireWire actually can get very near its theoretical speed, while USB cannot. For instance, USB 2.0 can theoretically hit 480Mbps (i think?) while firewire 400 can theoretically hit 400Mbps, but firewire 400 is generally faster. So, I think I remember reading that whatever the next-generation of firewire is should be comparable to usb 3.
(This is just what I remember reading, so I'm not sure… I'm happy either way!)
@(Unverified)
The major Mac for 2004 used IDE and PC-133 RAM, the RAM alone is twice or more as expensive as DDR3...
Then again Macs are the most technological advanced things ever because they support 64 bit!! Even if Windows has had it since 2001!
"...so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user.
Yeah, but the average desktop doesn't have a usb 3.0 port so we're still screwed :/
I didn't read the articles linked, but doesn't this mean there's a controller card available as PCI that would provide USB 3.0 ports?
You missed this line:
>Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30
Its a pcie card with 2 usb3.0 and 2 sata 6g slots. And only 3 dollars so the average computer CAN have usb 3.0 ports
*30$*
No, it is $30... at least in the United States.
Wow! It's averaging 4x faster than USB 2.0
This needs to be EVERYWHERE as soon as possible!
It'll take off only when companies stop being cheap and putting only two of them while keeping the rest 2.0 ports.
I agree, we need USB 3.0 as soon as possible.
But I'm still disappointed to see that the max speed was only around 150MB/s. Sure, it seems a lot right now, but a few years from now when we'll have external SSDs that go 300MB/s you'll want more.
Hopefully it's just not yet developed to its maximum potential...
@kurian
I dont think my mouse, keyboard, printer, webcam,... will need that kind of speed. USB 3.0 will only be needed for high bandwidth applications...external hds, hd webcams, and other crap i cant think of right now. 2 USB 3.0 ports should be enough for 95 percent of the population.
@Maurizio
2 USB 3.0 ports should be enough for 95 percent of the population.
And we'll only need 512 KB of ram...
@Chuckles
If you are talking about the stupid DOS thing, I believe it was 640KB
Light Peak please.
Yes we all want an unreleased standard that no-one has even licensed yet. How long till accessories use lightpeak arrive, maybe never ?
Yeah, if I could just replace my cheap USB cables for my iPhone with optical ones that cost a lot more and don't transfer any faster, that would be great. And if I could pay more for my Ethernet cables, and my keyboard, and my mouse, and my speaker cables, and all sorts of other stuff that wouldn't benefit from the higher speed, I'd really appreciate it. I'd like to throw away my current computer, plus all of my peripherals, and pay more for all of the same the next time I buy them.
I'm currently a big fan of Firewire, since my external hard drive uses it to connect to my PC. If USB 3.0 is 5 - 6 times faster than USB 2.0, how fast is it compared to Firewire 400? 800? I'd love to know, since I'm considering buying a motherboard that supports the tech for my next computer build.
Either way, USB 3.0 sounds awesome!
USB 2.0 is about the same as Firewire 400 iirc.
USB 3.0 is supposed to hit upwards or over 3.0Gbps.
So it should be MUCH faster than Firewire 800.
eSATA also provides around 3.0Gbps transfer rates. I use it with one of my externals and my laptop. Very fast and very nice.
Matt. As was written: "the bottleneck here is the drive, not the controller." If HDD has seek, it will be slow over any bus.
I do not know details about USB 3.0, but at least in USB 2.0 v. FW400/800, the only noticeable difference is that USB's CPU utilization is higher than that of FW.
Also in my observations Windows works with USB better than FW. On Macs my experience was reversed: FW rules over USB. But my Mac (I was testing on iBook G4 @ 1GHz) was having generally lower throughput compared to my Windows workstation. And it also depends on the USB controllers...
You should simply test what works best for you. Unless you transfer terabytes, the bus you use will play little role.
I would go with eSATA for now. USB 3.0 isn't going to become mainstream for awhile.
"eSATA also provides around 3.0Gbps transfer rates. I use it with one of my externals and my laptop. Very fast and very nice."
Really? How are you powering that drive with your laptop, since eSATA idiotically fails to provide for power delivery?
eSATA updated their specs to now have powered eSATA, and there are plenty of motherboards that feature it.
Not that they weren't idiotic to make an external interface and neglect the need for power initially.
Hooray!
Yeah, my macbook pro needs this along with a blu ray drive and core i7 processing!
is your wallet made of gold?
Sounds like you need a PC
Envy 15 anyone?
Just needs faster disks
Why doesn't USB 3.0 use the same standards as SATA to get the amazing speeds?
Whens the last time you saw a mouse, webcam, printer/scanner, wifi dongle or a voip headset connected via SATA? That's why USB3.0 doesn't use SATA to archive high speeds.
Do you know what does use the SATA spec to achieve high speeds? eSATA.
There is no need to use USB 3.0 on a mouse, printer, or keyboard. The main reason for this standard is for external hard drives.
Already an external standard which uses SATA it's called eSATA.
SATA isn't a great protocol actually, it still uses ATA, which isn't only good for block access (and not great for that either). For any other kind of device (streaming, packet access), it has to layer ATAPI on top of ATA. ATAPI is just SCSI in packets. USB uses RBC instead, which is also SCSI in packets. So at the upper layers this is the same as ATAPI. At the lower layers, SATA uses multiple high-speed point-to-point serial, same as gigabit ethernet, PCI Express and USB 3.0.
So this is pretty similar to SATA, but without the crummy old ATA interface and with a lot more flexibility. It does have more command processing overhead for hard drives than eSATA for hard drives does, but it makes up for it with a lot more flexibility than eSATA has.
Transferring an entire hard drive of porn in just minutes.
The same time it takes for you to finish.
For sure going to ditch my usb external harddrive for a usb 3.0 version.
power and copy inverted?
"Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30"
There's a typo there. The correct model number for that card is ASUS U3S6.
um, is this again a new connector to deal with? doesn't look like the standard USB-B connector from what I see.
And it also doesn't integrate the power cord, so you still have to connect a separate power line for 3,5" HDDs and pray to not fry your hub on power hungry 2,5" disks :(