Computer technology never stands still for long. It wasn’t that long ago that USB took over as the de facto standard for PC computer peripherals, and has evolved into the standard data path for hard drives, cameras, and just about everything else you can think of. USB 2.0 is well and good, but it still doesn’t provide the wide data path needed to take full advantage of today’s fast hard drives. Hence, the USB 3.0 standard was introduced.
When USB 2.0 was introduced, it took a while for for the technology to become standard on motherboards. The same is true for USB 3.0 (dubbed SuperSpeed USB), and it appears to be taking a lot longer to become standard as there only a handful of devices that need what the new technology offers. It’s safe to conclude that most computers today do not have USB 3.0, and thus the only way to experience it is to either buy a new (and expensive) motherboard, or get an expansion card such as the Vantec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCIe card. Below is the marketing fluff, and the specifications can be found on the last page of this review.
The Vantec 2-Port PCI-e SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Host Card upgrades any desktop computer to the newest USB 3.0 standard. Integrated with the latest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 technology, transferring files to an USB 3.0 external hard disk is faster than ever with transfer speeds of up to 5Gbps. Back up important data such as HD video, high resolution photos to an external USB 3.0 in a fraction amount of time. Backwards compatible, the 2-Port PCI-e SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Host Card allows the use of USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices making this card truly versatile. Upgrading your computer to the newest USB 3.0 technology has never been so easy with the Vantec 2-Port PCI-e SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Host Card.
On the next page we take a look at the card…
Inside the small cardboard box is the SuperSpeed card itself, a small user manual, an optional low-profile bracket, and a driver CD. The CD only has a small 7MB setup file, which auto-detects which of the supported operating systems you are using. You can download this file here. The card is very small and doesn’t extend beyond the PCIe 1x connector. On the card itself are two USB 3.0 ports, which are colored blue. You can easily see the 5 additional contact points on the USB connector. On the face of the card you can see the small NEC D720200F1 USB 3.0 chip, along with a few other electronic components. The front of the card also needs additional power in order for the card to function, and it gets this power in the form of a SATA power connector.
The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 card in all its glory
One of the things that suck about current SuperSpeed solutions is that there are no pins to attach front USB ports or internal components. The chip only supports 2 USB devices, so if you find yourself needing more, then you’ll have to find a USB 3.0 hub or purchase an additional card.
Installing the card is rather easy, but can be involved depending on the arrangement of your case innards. Most PC enthusiasts only use PCI Express slots for two things: a video card and a sound card. Some of these devices take up two slots, and since many people aren’t using PCIe 1x slots those are the first things to get covered up… as was in my situation. I ended up having to move my video and sound cards around so that I could access the only available 1x slot. Of course, you can plug any 1x card into a 16x slot, but that seems like a waste to me.
You can see the five extra contact points used exclusively by the 3.0 standard
After figuring out a home for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 card, you must now route additional power to the card. Now every option card I have requires an additional power line in order to run. My ATI 4870 video card requires additional power, as does my Asus Xonar PCIe sound card, and now a USB card requires additional power. If I am not mistaken, doesn’t the PCIe specification use additional power for just such these situations? Regardless, I still have to pull out another modular PCIe cable and attach it to the ThermalTake ToughPower 850W power supply, route it through my case. It would be one thing if this case only required a floppy or standard 4-pin molex connector, as I have plenty of these in the main area of my case. It would have been nice if Vantec included a Molex to SATA power adapter, but alas none is to be found. The point of this paragraph is that the PC enthusiast doesn’t want extra power cables mucking up their case. Any new line will have to be routed neatly so as to hide its existance.
Once the card is physically installed, Windows 7 immediately finds the card and begins installation, but USB 3.0 is so new that drivers cannot be found. You can either run Windows Update or run the Setup program on the CD. Once installed then Windows immediately recognizes the card and any device attached to the new card. If you forgot to plug in the power connector to the card, then you will be met with the “a power surge has occurred on one of your USB ports” message. The NEC USB 3.0 chip will not work without this additional power… I’ve tried it.
Windows is also smart enough to know when a USB 3.0 device is plugged into a “legacy” 2.0 port or using a 2.0 cable. You get the same “This device can run faster” message that you got when using a 2.0 device on a 1.1 port. There should be little reason why you don’t get the full speed of your new SuperSpeed devices.
On the next page we test the card with a bunch of different devices…
Our goal when testing this card is not only to see how well USB 3.0 devices perform, but how well it compares with internal SATA and USB 2.0. We have discovered that performance of USB 2.0 devices varies greatly depending on the motherboard chipset, so we tested fast USB 2.0 devices on a motherboard with the Intel ICH7 chipset as well as the Vantec SuperSpeed card. Below are the specifications on our test machine:
- Intel Q6600 Core 2 Processor
- Asus P5W-Deluxe motherboard
- 8GB OCZ DDR2-1000 memory
- Sapphire Radeon ATI 4870 Toxic Video Card (read our review here)
- Asus Xonar PCIe sound card
- Seagate 7200.10 250GB SATA HDD
- OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4GB USB Drive (read what we think about it)
- Rosewill USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure (read our review here)
- Windows 7 (64-bit)
The OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB Drive is absolutely the fastest memory stick we’ve tested in the OCMS labs, so it was the best choice to get an honest benchmark on the different interfaces. Our Seagate drive was placed in a new Rosewill USB 3.0 hard drive enclosure, which was used for both USB 3.0 and 2.0 testing. The same drive was connected directly to the motherboard’s SATA port to determine the maximum throughput the drive can deliver. Although the Seagate hard drive is only 250GB, the 7200.10 series uses perpendicular technology, which packs more bits into the same amount of space, which translates into higher throughput per platter spin. Just for kicks and giggles we tried other hard drives we had laying around, but the 7200.10 drive provided the best output in these tests. Any hard drive can easily saturate the bandwidth of USB 2.0, so we used the fastest drive we could to demonstrate if there was a limit to what USB 3.0 could provide.
Some reviewers use a “file copy” test to determine the speed of the interface. This is good to get a slice of “real life” performance, but additional tests are necessary to get more detail and thus a bigger picture of what the technology can do. We used the ATTO becnhmark as well as Simpli Software’s HDTach 3.0.1. With both of these benchmarks we can form a good picture of how your devices will behave with the USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed) interface.
Devices tested under the Intel ICH7 USB chipset using ATTO
First we tried our devices on the motherboard’s integrated USB chipset. Pretty much standard fare here. The OCZ Rally2 performed very well for a memory stick. The Seagate drive maxed out both read and write speed at 34MB/second, which is the most anyone can expect from last generation USB.
Devices running on the Vantec SuperSpeed card in USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 modes
Next we tried all of our devices on the Vantec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 host card. All of our USB 2.0 devices performed much better under the new card. The Rally2 drive originally had a read /write speed of 32MB and 24MB, but was supercharged to 36MB read and 31MB write when running under the Vantec card. The Seagate hard drive also performed bettter under the Vantec. Under the Intel chipset the Seagate reached 32MB read and 27MB write, and under the Vantec hard had a 36MB read and 37MB write while using a USB 2.0 cable. Of course, the Seagate hard drive running under USB 3.0 (using the new USB 3.0 cable) provided the best read and write speeds at around 64 MB a second.
Seagate 7200.10 drive on all three interfaces
We also tested the same hard drive under the motherboard’s internal SATA chipset and benchmarked under ATTO. The hard drive reached a read speed of 56MB a second and a write speed of 78MB/second. This is a little odd, as usually read speeds are much faster, but nevertheless the drive achieved write speeds up to 78MB/second.
SATA slightly edges out USB 3.0, but not by much
If you go by the ATTO’s read speed alone then technically USB 3.0 was faster than SATA on the same drive. That’s why we used HDTach to help complete the picture. Running HDTach 3.0.1 we got another snapshot of what the interfaces can do. ATTO showed a maximum drive transfer speed of 62MB a second, but HDTach appears to show the drive’s true potential at 84 MB a second. HDTach showed higher top performance, but the trends remain the same: USB 3.0 is more than twice as fast as USB 2.0, and has about the same performance as SATA.
Using different benchmarks we see that USB 3.0 can easily compete with SATA, and connecting a USB device is a lot less hassle than external SATA, or opening your computer and connecting a drive internally for that matter.
There are a few drawbacks to being an early adopter of USB 3.0 right now. For one, the cards are relatively expensive and have limited connectivity options. USB 3.0 requires new (and expensive) cables, and as such are not ubiquitous on most computer cases. There are only a handful of USB 3.0 devices, and most of them are hard drive enclosures. Most people use a USB hard drive because every modern computer has USB ports, but this is not the case with USB 3.0. If you tote your drive between home and work then you’ll either need to purchase two adapters or make do with USB 2.0 speed. Right now eSATA is more common than SuperSpeed USB, so you might as well go that route.
The NEC D720200F1 chip only supports 2 USB 3.0 ports
Some people may want to purchase USB 3.0 devices to future-proof their computer. This new technology isn’t exactly a shoe-in as the next-generation connectivity standard, even if it does have “USB” in the name. I once predicted that HD-DVD would win over BluRay just because it had greater market recognition (it had “DVD” in the name for crying out loud), and the common person could understand that. SuperSpeed will only win if vendors start coming out with a lot of peripherals that support it.
The Vantec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 card is definitely fast. It can supply enough bandwidth for SATA hard drives to work at their full potential, and works much better than the chipsets on many motherboards. While testing USB flash sticks in our test labs, we have discovered that the quality of the chipset on the motherboard greatly affects the USB throughput. Even if you don’t need the extra bandwidth right now, the NEC D720200F1 chip on the SuperSpeed card provided the best performance we have seen on all of our existing USB 2.0 devices. So if you think you’re not getting the most out of your USB devices, then it’s probably your motherboard’s USB chipset and you may want to upgrade to the new technology.
I would recommend Vantec’s SuperSpeed USB 3.0 card to any PC enthusiast, but I have a few improvements for the next generation of cards:
- Support more than 2 USB ports (preferably with no additional chips).
- Include pins for internal USB devices and front-panel ports.
- Lose the additional power requirement.
- Come down on the price a little.
Once I got past my minor gripes, I can’t help but be impressed with the card. It is now the standard interface we use when testing USB devices. It will be interesting to see if there are performance variations once “generic” USB 3.0 chipsets are implemented on new motherboards (some motherboards do offer SuperSpeed support, but only a maximum of two ports because of the limitations of a single D720200F1 chip).
For now, the Vantec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is one of the few options you have to experience the next generation of PC connectivity, and it appears to be a solid card performance-wise. It should serve you well, even when this new technology is standard on all new motherboards.
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Model: UGT-PC302
Ports: 2 x External USB 3.0 Ports (Backwards Compatible with USB 2.0 & 1.1)
Maximum Transfer Rates Up to 5 Gbps w/USB 3.0
Maximum Transfer Rates Up to 480 Mbps w/USB 2.0
Power: 15-pin SATA Power Connector (Required)
Dimension: 67 x 120 x 20mm
OS Support: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7
Package Contents:
- 2-Port PCI-e SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Host Card x1
- User’s Manual x1
- Low Profile Bracket x1
- Driver CD x1
Features
- 50% more power is provided for unconfigured or suspended devices (150 mA up from 100 mA), and 80% more power is available for configured devices (900 mA up from 500 mA). This means that more power-hungry devices could be bus powered, and battery powered devices that previously charged using bus power could potentially charge more quickly.
- A new Powered-B receptable is defined with two extra contacts that enable a devices to provide up to 1000 mA to another device, such as a Wireless USB adapter. This eliminates the need for a power supply to accompany the wireless adapter…coming just a bit closer to the ideal system of a wireless link without wires (not even for power). In regular wired USB connections to a host or hub, these 2 extra contacts are not used.
- Less power when it’s not needed
- Link level power management, which means either the host computer or the device can initiate a power savings state when idle
- The ability for links to enter progressively lower power management states when the link partners are idle
- Continuous device polling is eliminated
- Broadcast packet transmission through hubs is eliminated
- Device and individual function level suspend capabilities allow devices to remove power from all, or portions of their circuitry not in use
1 Comment
Thanks for the review. Good stuff.
One aspect you didn't comment on: impact on system CPU load when using this PCI-e host.
USB 2.0 tends to consume more CPU cycles while doing real work. You don't compare how using this card affects CPU consumption. When compared against the ICH7 or comparing the PCI-e host CPU consumption comparing USB 2.0 against 3.0.