Moving to USB 3, SATA 6

The next gen interfaces for USB 3 and SATA 6 provide never before speeds. A

tremendous surge in their adoption is predicted with the major hardware players

coming out with products, devices and support by incorporating them in their

hardware. However, there are vendors who have come up with extension cards which

you just need to plug onto the existing PCIe card slots on your motherboard.

Also there are motherboards coming up with SATA 6Gbps interfaces. These

motherboards provide a PCIe card to provide USB 3.0 capabilities. We did some

basic level testing by comparing the performance of these interfaces on the new

generation motherboards with these interfaces onboard, and also by plugging in a

PCIe card. The rest of the test bed being kept constant, we changed the

motherboards to test the performance difference.

First, we tested the interface capabilities through on board connectors using

the Gigabyte P55A-UD7 motherboard. We used the HDTune benchmark for this. When

we connected the USB 3.0 device to the onboard USB 3.0 connector, we achieved an

average transfer rate of 110 MB/sec with an access time of 16.3 ms. The burst

rate achieved by our device was 142.5 MB/sec. To test the PCIe card performance

capabilities, we plugged the Buffalo USB 3.0 PCIe card onto a motherboard. We

then connected the same USB 3.0 device used in the previous scenario. This time,

the average transfer rates achieved were about 53 MB/sec with an access time of

16.6 ms. The burst rates achieved through the setup were about 52 MB/sec.

PCIe card, which can be plugged to an existing motherboard to provide USB 3.0 connectors.

We observed a clear difference in the performance of the USB 3.0 interface

while the connector is onboard as well as when being extended through a PCIe

card. One important thing to note in this case is that, these new age

motherboards come at a high premium. All the motherboards with on board SATA

6Gbps and USB 3.0 capabilities cost Rs 15000 upwards, whereas the PCIe cards

from different vendors cost not more than Rs 2,000. Thus, it is upto you to

decide if you want double the performance of USB 3.0 for about Rs 2,000 or 4

times the output for which you would require to change the complete

motherboard. This in turn requires a change in the processor, RAM (in some

cases), etc. Thus, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) goes up by about Rs 30,000

which is a big price to pay.

The performance of the USB 3.0 interface is indeed not up to the mark

compared with that of an onboard connector. But if the performance to price

ratio is taken into consideration, plugging in a PCIe card to utilize the USB

3.0 capabilities seems to be the right thing to do.

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