USB 3.0 is here... sorta

[VirusType2]

Asus Debuts First USB 3.0 Motherboard

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=A186CAF0-1A64-6A71-CEAD80D8D1848C27

 

[Warped]

awesome, can't wait to see wicked fast transfer rates

 

[VirusType2]

in the article, it says that Intel is trying to delay 3.0's saturation for some reason, though I didn't click the link to find out more. It obviously has to do with money.

 

[Warped]

Asus rocks, they're going places!

 

[Asus]

There are a few others coming out with USB 3.0 boards. Gigabyte I know is as well. I think they announced theirs a week or so ago.

 

[Dinnesch]

What's the point if there already is e-SATA?

 

[Iced_Eagle]

I'm hoping devices start supporting USB 3.0 in earnest next year. When I build my next rig w/ USB3.0 I want there to be devices to be able to show why I need it

 

[VirusType2]

Almost just bought a GIGABYTE USB 3.0 /SATA 6 GBs motherboard - (only because it was one of the few boards meeting my other criteria), but I use eSATA for external drives, and I don't require lots of bandwidth for USB. Transferring photos with a USB3 camera would be nice, but not necessary for me.

I think a flatbed scanner that is frequently used would greatly benefit from USB3.0. I was constantly waiting on 600DPI scans. I think it was obvious that USB 2.0 was not enough bandwidth. Scanner often had to wait, interrupting the scan. (huge MB photos). However, I'm finished with nearly all of the scanning work, and I have no plans to buy a new scanner.

 

[Asus]

The better scanners come with Firewire and Firewire 800. How many scans did you end up doing?

USB 3.0 should be interesting @ 4.8Gbps. But remember USB is not very efficient compared to other standards. (Firewire and SATA)
Firewire 400 while 40 Mbps slower than USB 2.0's theoretical max was much faster in practice. Firewire 3200 is coming @ 3.2Gbps.
SATA bumped up to 6 Gbps. Currently eSATA is v1 (SATA 150) but should get a version based on 6Gbps sometime.
But any of these will be awesome for an external connection. Right now my fastest external connection I have is my Gigabit network.

Speeds
Looks like it is about 25 Mbps on the reads (200 MBytes/sec) and 11 Mbps for writes (85 MBytes/sec).

 

[VirusType2]

The better scanners come with Firewire and Firewire 800. How many scans did you end up doing?

I scanned somewhere over 15,000 photos, mostly at 300 DPI. It was pretty speedy with a brand new Cannon flatbed.

Yah, actually, they sent me a brand new scanner at the start of the job. I didn't get to pick it out.

I thought about getting a firewire controller before, but then I just like to get the best and it's about the same price, so I went with eSATA for my external drives.

 

[Asus]

Oh yeah, I would do eSATA for hard drives as well. Don't loose any features of a HDD like S.M.A.R.T..