Does The USB 3.0 Controller On Your Motherboard Matter?
Table of contents
- 1. Should You Care About Your Motherboard's USB 3.0 Controller?
- 2. The Controller Lineup
- 3. Is There A Difference Between USB 3.0 Configurations?
- 4. Test Setup And Benchmarks
Given a lack of chipset vendors integrating USB 3.0 support into their core logic (with the exception of AMD's Socket FM1-focused A75), motherboard manufacturers are forced to lean hard on third-party solutions. We take a few for a test drive.
In a world flooded with USB 2.0, external storage is pretty boring. The standard was really quite amazing when it emerged back in 2000. However, the technology world has a short attention span, and "up to 480 Mb/s," which really turns out to be more like "up to about 35 MB/s," became a bottleneck long, long ago. When it comes time to move high-definition movies, large audio libraries, or, worst of all, folders with lots of small files that absolutely hammer write performance, USB 2.0 almost always means starting your transfer and walking away for a while.
The third revision of the USB standard offers transmission speeds up to 5 Gb/s, which, theoretically, represents a 10-fold performance increase compared to USB 2.0. Unfortunately, it's taking a while for end-users to realize the full benefit of what USB 3.0 can do. The USB 3.0 standard was originally announced in November of 2008. It took a year, though, for Buffalo Technology to become the first vendor to ship USB 3.0-capable external hard drives. At the time, there still weren't any motherboards equipped with USB 3.0 controllers.
Slowly but surely, we've seen almost every motherboard vendor incorporate third-party USB 3.0 logic onto their boards. AMD even launched its A75 chipset with integrated USB 3.0 support (a capability that Intel still lacks).
NEC Electronics (now Renesas Technology) had the first add-on USB 3.0 controller. If you wanted SuperSpeed functionality, there was one game in town. Now, there are more options.
We've already spent some time looking at the devices you plug into USB 3.0-capable controllers (Not All USB 3.0 Implementations Are Created Equal). But, should you also care about the controllers themselves? We have solutions from ASMedia, Etron, and AMD's own A75 integrated controller.
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Where USB speed will really matter is when using Windows 8 to Go! You can take a USB 3 flash drive wherever you go containing your Win 8 installation and all your apps and boot it up on any system. Win 8 will run off the flash drive natively. PCs with USB v2.0 ports will run like a dog, so everyone should be including USB 3 as a must have on their requirements list for a new PC or notebook.
Hi
. I'm agree with @steve6375 about that each new devices we will buy should have USB3, but since I built some Windows XPE Live USB, I notice some different at boot time speed from my USB2 port too! Some USB2 controller can be different with others! and this differences are not only at seconds! but in minutes!
I have "imation 8GB" usb stick and I make it bootable with Windows XPE Live that I built it with BartPE software. I'm using it to solve some software or hardware problem on my customer PC systems. sometimes even at high end Laptops it take 3~5 minutes to boot up and in some others only 27 Second!!!!!!
So, I hope those USB3 control builders thinking about OS boot time speed too!!!
igimax, your differences are more about MB BIOS than the controller. My Thinkpad with GM965 boots with 4-5MB/s while my Asrock G43 desktop does only 2MB/s. Both can do 20MB/s once Windows/linux is loaded.
@mathew7
Well! Thanks for your reply. I don't know exactly what is the main reason of that delay! but since I test on many systems!(At lest 3 systems on every 2 days) Do you think only BIOS is responsible on all those systems for making that boot up delay? (Desktops and Laptops) or maybe both? or ...?!
Well! my Hope is,They at least make any devices that they are part of boot process speed up more than now!
@mathew7 Well! Thanks for your reply. I don't know exactly what is the main reason of that delay! but since I test on many systems!(At lest 3 systems on every 2 days) Do you think only BIOS is responsible on all those systems for making that boot up delay? (Desktops and Laptops) or maybe both? or ...?!Well! my Hope is,They at least make any devices that they are part of boot process speed up more than now!
But USB boot is not their priority. Let's face it, the "normal" (to be phased out but not too soon) installation process is to boot from CD/DVD and then use only SATA HDD. So that is what all of them optimize. But USB booting is done by few of us, since making a bootable USB stick is a complicated process. I even remember that the keyboard connected to USB had a 1s lag when choosing OS in grub or even windows "F8" screen (so after BIOS handed control to HDD/USB boot manager).
Do you think only BIOS is responsible on all those systems for making that boot up delay? (Desktops and Laptops) or maybe both? or ...?!
Yes, BIOS is the only responsible for those speeds (on desktops and laptops). Because once Windows (or linux) is loaded, all of them perform at much higher speeds, so HW is working fast.