Not All USB 3.0 Implementations Are Created Equal
Despite the fact that today's USB 3.0 products center on the same NEC controller, we compared a handful of different USB 3.0 drives and found performance to range from 113 to 173 MB/s, depending on the implementation used. Should you be worried?
Gigabyte USB 3.0 Controller (NEC PD720200)
The USB 3.0 Controller from Gigabyte is one of many aftermarket PCI Express add-on cards that allows users to cram USB 3.0 connectivity into virtually any PCI Express-enabled system.
It makes a lot of sense to operate this and similar cards in a PCIe 2.0 slot, but even implementations based on PCIe 1.1 will still be much faster than USB 2.0. We decided to run this controller only on the Asus Crosshair IV Formula, and we used the Western Digital kit (based on a different PCB design) on the Gigabyte motherboards in order to avoid too much cross-testing. In such a system, this card provides the highest possible bandwidth, but not the fastest performance, during simultaneous read and write operations. I/O performance is above average, though.
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