I do not have SATA 3 SSD’s drives to test. Which can not be proven at the writing of this review. However, having all 4 ports running could have some issues in terms of bandwidth. What do you see that this card does NOT have? You are correct, no external power connector! Having a 4x PCIe has its advantages other than more throughput – more power as well! Plus since 1x PCIe has a limit of 250MB/s, having a 4x slot eliminates the bottle neck. Since the impressive part is out of the way, lets take a closer look at the U3S6 controller. With a few 32gig USB 3.0 flash drives laying around, you can have Linux, W7 and or XP right at your finger tips. Since it is now full duplex, we may be able to install on OS onto it, and since its 10 times faster, we may have ourselves an SSD alternative for a Multi-OS system. Personally, I’m interested in larger USB flash drives carrying the 3.0 spec. USB is much more popular than eSATA, and as time goes on, you’ll be seeing more USB 3.0 devices and controllers. Contents of ASUS box Contents of Box 150gig WD VelociRaptor Via Bytecc USB 3.0 150gig WD VelociRaptor Via SATAII (ICH7)Īs you can see, USB 3.0 is just as fast has having eSATA device. Ok, as you already know we are using the ASUS U3S6 4x PCI-e add-in card, along with the Bytecc Super Speed USB 3.0 T-200U3 external docking station.

Ok, enough with the technical talk, lets see some benchmarks!

The NEC (D720200F1) host controller is the magic to this card, allowing USB 3.0 to achieve 5Gb/s speeds. SUPERSPEED USB has a 5 Gbps signaling rate, offering 10x performance increase over Hi-Speed USB.New cables for high speed transfers, however backward compatible with USB 2.0 devices.Full duplex data transfers (read and write simultaneously).Increased maximum bus power to 900 Ma, from 500Ma.On January 5th, 2010, USB 3.0 was released with an astounding 5Gb/s theoretical throughput! After protocol overhead, 400MB/s should be easily achieved…that’s over 10 times faster! Lets go over the changes to the new 3.0 spec. Many people have been happy with USB 2.0. Hard to believe there are over 161 million USB devices out there as of March 2009. You can get almost anything USB now-a-days, including external tape decks and turntables. USB 2.0 has been with us since April of 2000, giving us 10 years of USB goodness and running at 480Mb/s (35MB/s).

Usb 3 card reviews