Next-Gen Intel Chipsets To Support USB 3.0

About damn time.

An Ivy Bridge build will be my next PC.

okay. what is wrong with the nec chipset.
not a big deal. I am looking ahead to intel light peak

"The presentation is apparently targeted at mainboard manufactureres as it is positioned as an effective appetizer to advertise the benefits of 5 Gbps USB 3.0 versus the current 480 Kbps USB 2.0."
I thought USB 2.0 was 480Mbps?

Also, Intel is a little late to the party. NEC has been enjoying a nice monopoly on the USB 3.0 market.

Uh, wait, weren't they supposed to have USB 3.0 native support in Sandy Bridge? And what is with Intel right now? Why don't they just make Light peak part of Ivy Bridge natively, then have the adapters as motherboard extras with the board when you buy it, instead of all this screwing around with trying to get USB 3.0 support, but continuously pushing it back? Semms pretty backwards to me.

Weren't Intel supposed pioneers of USB 3.0? Better late than never, I guess.

So no CPU supports USB 3.0 at this time? So right now Motherboards with USB 3.0 support runs at USB 2.0 speed?

Hmm...wasn't intel looking for lightpeak (or should i say copperpeak) to replace usb? Hmmm...

Well too bad the world ENDS in 2012....looks like no USB 3.0 before our extinction haha

@orbitron

CPU has nothing to do with it. USB 3.0 is not built into the chipset yet, that's all. if you have a mobo with USB 3.0, you will have USB 3.0 speeds, apparantly XP will see USB 2.0 speeds.

Jrharbort you are correct USB 2.0 is 480Mbps.....Could you imagine if were 480Kbps.

@sixbone

Thanks for clarifying sixbone.

Same here. I'm really surprised that USB3 is taking so long to become popular, I really would have thought it would be mainstream by this point.

Are they sure this time? lol I mean, it's not like USB 3.0 support hasn't been pushed back by intel 3 times already.

Actually Intel had bought third-party USB 3.0 controller and tried integrating it with x67 Cougarpoint, but they failed to implement it - too much bugs, etc. and they decided to move it one generation ahead until they manage to rion out all bugs. Pre-market intel's own P67 mobo had blue usb 3.0 ports, but they were rewired as 2.0. In final retail version all chipset-driven ports are natively only 2.0.

Maybe PCI-E 3.0 too. Let´s Hope

This is native support in the Chipset, it will save PCI-Express lanes. Right now Intel is kinda cramped for PCI-E lanes on the 1156/1155 sockets. If a motherboard manufacturer has to divert a lane or two to the NEC chip, it means less for SLI or Crossfire.
While one or two were not a big deal, the bug in Intel's chipsets means that a single lane alone shifts down into PCIE 1.0 mode, so it chokes on bandwidth. So you gotta send it a 4x lane or something.
It was detailed a while back by Toms and a lot of sites, motherboards trying to implement Sata 6g/s and USB3 balancing performance of the HDD and USB3 drives.

I suppose one could say better late than never...

Intel should get back focusing on usb 3.0 since it seems that their Light Peak is not going anywhere for now or years from now.

Intel is pretty much half of the USB creators, well at least one of the guys works form them so therefore it probably was somewhere in Intels massive labs that made USB 3.0 possible. Not having it on a chipset naitivley doesn't mean anything really and as far as I can find, pretty much no chipsets have naitive USB 3.0 support. All of them are just seperate chips on the mobos.

Stop screwing customers Intel. You're not the leader you used to be. /rant

Cheers!

It is extremely sad what Intel is doing, to be honest. I have always been a strong supporter of Intel, but honestly, they need to make up their freakin minds. So ya, USB 3.0, well, maybe next time... Light Peak, the fastest peripheral offering 10 Gbps, using fiber optic cables, but, issues, we are still only at the copper stage, so, looks like at the moment USB 3.0 is the fastest. Guess we have to switch back to focusing on USB 3.0 because there are lots of people out there who want it right now because it is right now... OH MY GOD WE ARE SO CONFUSED!!! WHAT DO WE DO!?!

At least they make good processors...

I'm getting ze Ivy Bridge, don't care about this integration though NEC chips weren't having any problems

whiel

damn lame late

Why have you waited so long? The standards been out forever. Did you think it wasn't going to catch or something?

want to see more USB 3.0 ports on mainstream and value notebook segments

Too many mistakes here, its scary people spread stuff like this.

Some facts. Intel never said that USB 3.0 would be on Sandy Bridge. Implementing USB 3.0 will not take up lanes needed for PCI-E 16x or 8x on Sandy Bridge, since the lanes off the south bridge are now full speed (double what they were on LGA 1156 chipsets. AMD has not implemented USB 3.0 on their chipsets.

Improvements on the Sandy Bridge platform are pretty substantial, compared to the x58 and P55 nonsense. They aren't any better than x48, and P55 is worse. No SATA 6.0Gbs, no full speed PCI-E 2.0 lanes off the south bridge, no USB 3.0. At least now, they added the first two, that latter of which makes USB 3.0 implementation much easier with an add-on chip.

There's got to be something difficult about USB 3.0 implementation on the chipset, since none of them have it. If it were just Intel that didn't have it, I'd join in the whining about it. But, AMD doesn't. VIA doesn't. There's a reason no one has it yet, and considering the technical successes of the these companies, it's not because they are incompetent. We'll see it soon enough, and at least now implementing on Intel isn't such a horror.

Last spring I installed a Diablotek EN4322A two-port USB 3 controller card (one PCIe x1 slot) in a three-year old Asus mobo with an Intel X48 chipset. I'm running WinXP Pro. I connected the two controller ports to an external Sharkoon SHK DODSU323 dual "toaster" dock for SATA drives.

The only problem I had was that the controller card has to make a lot of connections in the PCIe connector, but is very short and liable to rock forward & back in the connector with the weight of two USB 3 cables on it. It had to be fitted very carefully and screwed down tight. The "screwless" card clips in my case could not hold it firmly enough. I had first tried a Sharkoon SHK PAUSB3-1 controller card, but it would not seat properly with any hardware which caused constant disconnects. The Diablotek and the Sharkoon controllers both use the same NEC chip and are very similar.

The final setup has been used hard, is totally reliable, and works great. Besides the 50-100% faster transfer speeds (compared to USB 2) it has also solved the major problems I was having getting my USB drives to disconnect. I especially recommend the Sharkoon dock with its individual on/off power switches for the two drives it can hold.

So, if you want USB 3 now, all you need is an open PCIe x1 (or larger) slot. It will work fine with Win XP. As others have noted, final performance will depend on how your chipset manages the PCIe lanes, but it will probably depend even more on the speed and fragmentation of your external drives. In most cases it will be a big step up from USB 2.

And Alas! They say AMD is late to the "Party Of Invention" every time...
If I am not mistaken AMD 890 GX Series chipsets have a USB 3.0 functionality, from their very begining : And it has been from over 6 months in the market. I know AMD lags behind in manufacturing processes because they do not have huge pile of cash like Intel, But then who buy's those 'Nanometer' thing.

You are mistaken. The 890GX does not support USB 3.0 natively.