Final thoughts
What's fairly certain is that USB 3.0, aka SuperSpeed, will become the dominant external interconnect when it gains widespread acceptance in 2011. The reason for this bullish prediction lies with backward compatibility with omnipotent USB 2.0: people understand how it works and that's a big, big draw.USB 3.0 will come into its own as a means of transferring large chunks of data in a speedy manner, then. Most typically highlighted by external storage solutions, the current limitation of USB 2.0 - around 35MB/s in real-world use - becomes the bottleneck when moving, say, 30GB around.
We'll see USB 3.0 devices' bandwidth increase as ASIC manufacturers fine-tune their products, but expect to see at least 250MB/s throughput on first-generation hosts and controllers. As mechanical hard-drives top out at around 150MB/s sustained read speed, and even high-performance SSDs at 250MB/s, the data-moving bottleneck will pass from interface to device - in 2010 at least.
Whilst USB 3.0 will get most of the headlines, FireWire S3200 and, later, Lightpeak will have their say in who controls the high-speed external connectivity ecosystem. We shouldn't forget incumbent eSATA still makes sense for some, as well.
Coming back to today, motherboard manufacturers are keen to outdo one another with the use of the latest technology. Intel's holding off chipset-integrated support until 2011, it seems, so it's up to the likes of ASUS and Gigabyte to look elsewhere.
ASUS is offering the U3S6 card as an upgrade to its earlier P7P55D boards. The card interfaces with the motherboard via a x4 PCIe interface and touts two USB 3.0 and two SATA 6Gbps ports, with bandwidth split between the two. Newer ASUS P55 chipset-based models, denoted by the '-E' suffix, have the controllers on the motherboard's PCB.
Our testing has shown that USB 3.0 can deliver SATA-cable-like performance that'll be a boon for users who need to move lots of (externally-located) data around. 2TB hard drive are now £115, so slipping one into a caddy is no great shakes. Moving that kind of capacity around via USB 2.0 doesn't make a lot of sense and not all motherboard are equipped with eSATA, which, in the interests of simplicity, still requires a power cable on top.
We appreciate that USB 3.0 is a nascent segment and finding enclosures may well be difficult, yet we can't help but admire the plug-and-play simplicity of it all. The ASUS U3S6 add-in does make sense for folk looking to add USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps functionality to their rigs. At around £25 represents good value., and it's a compelling enough feature to be added to a trio of P55 chipset-based boards. We'll be taking a look at the U3S6's SATA 6Gbps performance in a day or so, so stay tuned for that.
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ASUS U3S6 card
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