The first motherboards supporting USB 3.0 interface have already arrived but also a number of expansion cards for those who looking for an easier upgrade. USB 3.0 has up to 10 times higher potential transfer rates than USB 2.0 interface. Moving data at 400-500MB/s is impressive no matter what, but to an external storage unit is even more since we’ve been stuck at 30-40MB/s for many years.
As the first external storage cabinets have been appeared so have the first benchmarks. At TweakTown they have published a couple of interesting tests with a USB 3.0 cabinet and Intel’s X25-M G2 SSD. The result isn’t 10 times faster than USB2.0 but the important is that USB 3.0, more or less, turn the fastest SSD on the market into a bottleneck
In mosts tests the USB 3.0 drive keeps up with the internal SATA 3Gb/s connection, until losses in in the USB controller makes the speed drop a bit. Still, transfer rates over 200MB/s is nothing to be ashamed of as we’re dealing with the first generation of USB 3.0 products and a sweating SSD.
:: Early look at USB 3.0 X25-M SSD performance versus USB 2.0, eSATA and more
