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Throughput, Streaming, And Interface Performance

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Drive performance again looks identical in sustained read-rate charts.

The sustained-writes chart shows the same limitations for Gigabyte’s eSATA and Asus’ USB 3.0 implementation as previously noticed in our transfer diagrams. The difference looks minor here because of drive itself, yet the diagram of our previous page indicated a strong possibility that these are “hard limits” below even the modest performance maximum of the test drive.

Regarding write speeds, Gigabyte’s eSATA controller looks a little better while Asus’ USB 3.0 implementation looks a little worse in IOMeter. USB 2.0 performance remains relatively pathetic, so eSATA and USB 3.0 will both give you a substantial performance boost.

We're able to work around the mechanical drive's performance anxiety with an interface test. Minor slow-downs affecting Gigabyte’s eSATA and Asus’ USB 3.0 write performance are seen as more significant hurdles here.

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Lessqqmorepewpew 12/10/2009 5:38 AM
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Great review. This waiting game sucks.

amnotanoobie 12/10/2009 5:53 AM
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Wow, transferring your por..... programs should be a lot faster now.

playerone 12/10/2009 6:36 AM
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This seems a bit dated, my two week old ASUS P6X58D Premium has Sata 6.0 and USB 3.0!
Obviously waiting for a bit more mature drivers and more hardware...

Onyx2291 12/10/2009 6:37 AM
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Can't wait for it all to be standard.

staalkoppie 12/10/2009 7:04 AM
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Pitty they'll only be available at the back for now....but good news nevertheless

liquidsnake718 12/10/2009 7:52 AM
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BAH.... Im waiting for an X58 with USB.3.0 AND 16x 16x SLI. I would not want to sacrifice the other slot for a 8x config....

Crashman 12/10/2009 8:10 AM
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liquidsnake718 :
BAH.... Im waiting for an X58 with USB.3.0 AND 16x 16x SLI. I would not want to sacrifice the other slot for a 8x config....



Uh, d00d, 1366 CPU has 36 2.0 lanes, don't those X58 boards use the leftover four for USB3 and SATA6? I mean, c'mon, 16+16+4=36

bujuki 12/10/2009 9:17 AM
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I've been waiting to see how USB 3 performs. However, if you may it's better to test the CPU utilization comparison between all connectors as well. Still, thanks for the great review. b^^d

anamaniac 12/10/2009 10:56 AM
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Honestly, with USB 3.0, I don't see any reason at all for eSATA anymore.
I just want a 80GB Intel x18-m with a USB 3.0 port. Who the hell wants a slow 64GB flash drive?

I wish we could agree on a stanard already. I like USB, so let's just scrap IDE, SATA, eSATA, PCI (not PCIe), analog audio cables completely already. Well, that or miniDisplayPort.

JohnnyLucky 12/10/2009 12:16 PM
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Thanks for explaining how USB 3.0 fits into the grand scheme of things.

coolkev99 12/10/2009 12:42 PM
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Looks like I'll stick to using esata for a while longer. Not too thrilled with the early implimentations.

thackstonns 12/10/2009 12:48 PM
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Cant you build 2 computers with the same motherboards, and then run a network through usb 3.0. Run raid in both with ssd, and then fully test bandwidth? That way you are maxing out the spec?

cah027 12/10/2009 1:35 PM
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I'm With Thackstonns on this one. Would have been nice to have done a more in depth look and used raided SSD's. See if you can max out the interface with enough of them. Is that possible?

playerone 12/10/2009 2:03 PM
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Quote :

BAH.... Im waiting for an X58 with USB.3.0 AND 16x 16x SLI. I would not want to sacrifice the other slot for a 8x config....





? ? ?

ASUS P6X58D-Premium has 16x16x8x with USB.3.0 & SATA.6G/s, I have had mine for two weeks and loving it.
It does tripple LSI or Crossfire.

Running it with I7-920 and 6gb of Patriot 2000 mhz cl8

On the Back Panel there is 4 USB2.0 2 USB3.0 (backward compatable) Inside 2 USB2.0 hdr, 6 SATA-3.0 and 2-SATA-6.0 as well as a E-SATA hdr

tecmo34 12/10/2009 3:20 PM
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With having an e-SATA external hard drive, I see no quick need to upgrade to USB3.0, as their is little performance difference. I'm waiting more for the performance increase overall with the SATA-3.0 hard drives, at which point I'll upgrade my motherboard.

Crashman 12/10/2009 3:46 PM
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thackstonns :
Cant you build 2 computers with the same motherboards, and then run a network through usb 3.0. Run raid in both with ssd, and then fully test bandwidth? That way you are maxing out the spec?



That would be great if the hardware to connect the two had been available. It's certainly something to look for, now that you've suggested it!

cah027 :
Would have been nice to have done a more in depth look and used raided SSD's. See if you can max out the interface with enough of them. Is that possible?



It's possible if you send two SSD's in a 3.5" internal bay adapter that has a built-in RAID controller. Of course, this could be problematic still since the USB 3.0 adapter provides only SATA 3.0 Gb/s (we've also been told that it's limitted to 180MB/s on current firmware). But other than the lack of hardware...

scryer_360 12/10/2009 3:57 PM
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Although its good to see the hardware in the wild, I don't yet see any reason to buy something for USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s.

Yes there is some future proofing, but as I think it was mentioned at the beginning of the article, it will be years before we see a significant number of USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s devices on the market, and maybe even longer before we see storage with the ability to use all that bandwidth.

Certainly it will take aeons for traditional hdds to utilize all that speed, but ssd's might be able to do that in a few years, right?

Crashman 12/10/2009 4:50 PM
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scryer_360 :
Although its good to see the hardware in the wild, I don't yet see any reason to buy something for USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s.Yes there is some future proofing, but as I think it was mentioned at the beginning of the article, it will be years before we see a significant number of USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s devices on the market, and maybe even longer before we see storage with the ability to use all that bandwidth.Certainly it will take aeons for traditional hdds to utilize all that speed, but ssd's might be able to do that in a few years, right?



SSD's could probably do that now if they applied 24-way parallelism to the internal controller and the fastest available chips.

sylvia648 12/10/2009 6:59 PM
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Sounds good, but on the "Throughput, Streaming, And Interface Performance" page you have a mix up of letters "Regarding write speeds, Gigabyte’s eSATA controller looks a little better while Asus’ USB 3.0 implementation looks a little worse in IOMeter. USB 2.0 performance remains relatively pathetic, so eSATA and UBS 3.0 will both give you a substantial performance boost."

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