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usb 3.0 card
What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ?
Thanks. |
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#2
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usb 3.0 card
Andy wrote:
What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. USB3 can be provided two ways. It can be provided by the main chipset (some Intel chipsets, chipsets like AMD A75 - Wikipedia can give you a list). Or, for the majority of people, USB3 comes from a standalone chip made by NEC, Etron, Asmedia, and so on. With those chips, there is a tendency to put a PCI Express single lane interface. That's PCI Express x1. Doing so, saves pins on the chip, and reduces chip cost. That's how you can sell a $25 USB3 PCI Express card. Motherboards have several kinds of PCI Express slots, but we'll concentrate on the PCI Express x1 ones. PCI Express Rev 1.1, x1 lane = 250MB/sec PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec The second of those, does a better job of exposing all of the USB3 capability. For example, if you bought a BlackMagic video capture device with USB3 connector, the software for that device actually tests and verifies that a 500MB/sec lane is present. There are no other devices I'm aware of, where bandwidth testing is involved. So the ideal situations, from best to worst. 1) Chipset USB3 port, with no restriction on the bus connection to the rest of the chipset. The DMI bus or Hypertransport bus connection to the Southbridge in such a case, likely runs 2GB/sec or higher, plenty for a USB3 stream. You don't have to worry about the connection being choked off. And as for implementation, I think the AMD A75 and similar, they didn't design the USB3 logic block themselves, but bought a design (intellectual property) from a company making a successful chip. That means less development cost, to ship a design. 2) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 2.0 slot. You can use a video card slot for this, if one is available. Some motherboards have multiple video card slots. You can plug an x1 card, into an x16 slot. It's a waste, but, you're getting the best. Video card slots tend to support Revision 2 or even Revision 3, for the very highest rate of transfer. No USB3 chip I've heard of, uses PCI Express Revision 3. 3) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 1.1 slot. This is good enough for enclosures where the disk enclosure USB3 adapter chip is limited to 200MB/sec anyway. Such an enclosure, even if you stuffed a high performance SATA SSD into the enclosure, it would be the enclosure chip which was the limiting factor. So in that situation, the low end and quite common PCI Express x1 slot is good enough. There is more to PCI Express bandwidth than just the "plumbing rating". When I quote 250MB/sec, that's raw bitrate on the lane. The typical chipset has rather small buffers fitted at the end of the link, and the buffer size can actually cut the transfer rate in half. You shouldn't assume that the number printed in the Wikipedia article for PCI Express, is the final story. http://www.plxtech.com/files/pdf/tec...yload_Size.pdf The figure on page 2 there, shows the "efficiency" number. You multiply the 250MB/sec number by the "efficiency", to get a better value (trending in the right direction) for what your x1 lane can actually do. Is it easy to find out the buffer size of your chipset buffer ? Nope. It's a trade secret. It would be embarrassing, if everyone knew their 4GB/sec video card slot, wasn't actually doing 4GB/sec. The horror. The UAS protocol here, has a calculated transfer rate of 336MB/sec. But no device to date has achieved that. At least for USB storage. Keep your eyes peeled though, for benchmarks, because some year, they'll fix that. The last time I checked, the best seemed to be around 200MB/sec or so. http://www.nordichardware.com/Archiv...idge-chip.html Plug your new USB3 card into a video card slot... and, enjoy. It's a good thing the last motherboard I bought, has two video card slots. Paul |
#3
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usb 3.0 card
On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. USB3 can be provided two ways. It can be provided by the main chipset (some Intel chipsets, chipsets like AMD A75 - Wikipedia can give you a list). Or, for the majority of people, USB3 comes from a standalone chip made by NEC, Etron, Asmedia, and so on. With those chips, there is a tendency to put a PCI Express single lane interface. That's PCI Express x1. Doing so, saves pins on the chip, and reduces chip cost. That's how you can sell a $25 USB3 PCI Express card. Motherboards have several kinds of PCI Express slots, but we'll concentrate on the PCI Express x1 ones. PCI Express Rev 1.1, x1 lane = 250MB/sec PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec The second of those, does a better job of exposing all of the USB3 capability. For example, if you bought a BlackMagic video capture device with USB3 connector, the software for that device actually tests and verifies that a 500MB/sec lane is present. There are no other devices I'm aware of, where bandwidth testing is involved. So the ideal situations, from best to worst. 1) Chipset USB3 port, with no restriction on the bus connection to the rest of the chipset. The DMI bus or Hypertransport bus connection to the Southbridge in such a case, likely runs 2GB/sec or higher, plenty for a USB3 stream. You don't have to worry about the connection being choked off. And as for implementation, I think the AMD A75 and similar, they didn't design the USB3 logic block themselves, but bought a design (intellectual property) from a company making a successful chip. That means less development cost, to ship a design. 2) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 2.0 slot. You can use a video card slot for this, if one is available. Some motherboards have multiple video card slots. You can plug an x1 card, into an x16 slot. It's a waste, but, you're getting the best. Video card slots tend to support Revision 2 or even Revision 3, for the very highest rate of transfer. No USB3 chip I've heard of, uses PCI Express Revision 3. 3) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 1.1 slot. This is good enough for enclosures where the disk enclosure USB3 adapter chip is limited to 200MB/sec anyway. Such an enclosure, even if you stuffed a high performance SATA SSD into the enclosure, it would be the enclosure chip which was the limiting factor. So in that situation, the low end and quite common PCI Express x1 slot is good enough. There is more to PCI Express bandwidth than just the "plumbing rating". When I quote 250MB/sec, that's raw bitrate on the lane. The typical chipset has rather small buffers fitted at the end of the link, and the buffer size can actually cut the transfer rate in half. You shouldn't assume that the number printed in the Wikipedia article for PCI Express, is the final story. http://www.plxtech.com/files/pdf/tec...yload_Size.pdf The figure on page 2 there, shows the "efficiency" number. You multiply the 250MB/sec number by the "efficiency", to get a better value (trending in the right direction) for what your x1 lane can actually do. Is it easy to find out the buffer size of your chipset buffer ? Nope. It's a trade secret. It would be embarrassing, if everyone knew their 4GB/sec video card slot, wasn't actually doing 4GB/sec. The horror. The UAS protocol here, has a calculated transfer rate of 336MB/sec. But no device to date has achieved that. At least for USB storage. Keep your eyes peeled though, for benchmarks, because some year, they'll fix that. The last time I checked, the best seemed to be around 200MB/sec or so. http://www.nordichardware.com/Archiv...idge-chip.html Plug your new USB3 card into a video card slot... and, enjoy. It's a good thing the last motherboard I bought, has two video card slots. Paul Thanks. I have one PCI Express slot. Could I use that ? I am happy using the on board video, it only uses 128 Mb and I plan to up my RAM to 4 Gbs. |
#4
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usb 3.0 card
Andy wrote:
On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote: Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. USB3 can be provided two ways. It can be provided by the main chipset (some Intel chipsets, chipsets like AMD A75 - Wikipedia can give you a list). Or, for the majority of people, USB3 comes from a standalone chip made by NEC, Etron, Asmedia, and so on. With those chips, there is a tendency to put a PCI Express single lane interface. That's PCI Express x1. Doing so, saves pins on the chip, and reduces chip cost. That's how you can sell a $25 USB3 PCI Express card. Motherboards have several kinds of PCI Express slots, but we'll concentrate on the PCI Express x1 ones. PCI Express Rev 1.1, x1 lane = 250MB/sec PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec The second of those, does a better job of exposing all of the USB3 capability. For example, if you bought a BlackMagic video capture device with USB3 connector, the software for that device actually tests and verifies that a 500MB/sec lane is present. There are no other devices I'm aware of, where bandwidth testing is involved. So the ideal situations, from best to worst. 1) Chipset USB3 port, with no restriction on the bus connection to the rest of the chipset. The DMI bus or Hypertransport bus connection to the Southbridge in such a case, likely runs 2GB/sec or higher, plenty for a USB3 stream. You don't have to worry about the connection being choked off. And as for implementation, I think the AMD A75 and similar, they didn't design the USB3 logic block themselves, but bought a design (intellectual property) from a company making a successful chip. That means less development cost, to ship a design. 2) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 2.0 slot. You can use a video card slot for this, if one is available. Some motherboards have multiple video card slots. You can plug an x1 card, into an x16 slot. It's a waste, but, you're getting the best. Video card slots tend to support Revision 2 or even Revision 3, for the very highest rate of transfer. No USB3 chip I've heard of, uses PCI Express Revision 3. 3) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 1.1 slot. This is good enough for enclosures where the disk enclosure USB3 adapter chip is limited to 200MB/sec anyway. Such an enclosure, even if you stuffed a high performance SATA SSD into the enclosure, it would be the enclosure chip which was the limiting factor. So in that situation, the low end and quite common PCI Express x1 slot is good enough. There is more to PCI Express bandwidth than just the "plumbing rating". When I quote 250MB/sec, that's raw bitrate on the lane. The typical chipset has rather small buffers fitted at the end of the link, and the buffer size can actually cut the transfer rate in half. You shouldn't assume that the number printed in the Wikipedia article for PCI Express, is the final story. http://www.plxtech.com/files/pdf/tec...yload_Size.pdf The figure on page 2 there, shows the "efficiency" number. You multiply the 250MB/sec number by the "efficiency", to get a better value (trending in the right direction) for what your x1 lane can actually do. Is it easy to find out the buffer size of your chipset buffer ? Nope. It's a trade secret. It would be embarrassing, if everyone knew their 4GB/sec video card slot, wasn't actually doing 4GB/sec. The horror. The UAS protocol here, has a calculated transfer rate of 336MB/sec. But no device to date has achieved that. At least for USB storage. Keep your eyes peeled though, for benchmarks, because some year, they'll fix that. The last time I checked, the best seemed to be around 200MB/sec or so. http://www.nordichardware.com/Archiv...idge-chip.html Plug your new USB3 card into a video card slot... and, enjoy. It's a good thing the last motherboard I bought, has two video card slots. Paul Thanks. I have one PCI Express slot. Could I use that ? I am happy using the on board video, it only uses 128 Mb and I plan to up my RAM to 4 Gbs. It's your choice as to what slot you use. The lack of USB3 peripherals that "need the speed", suggests to me that using the best slot isn't a priority. If you have the BlackMagic USB3 video capture box, then yes, you'd probably want to use the best slot available. Or, buy a motherboard that has native USB3, and not the add-on USB3 type. Paul |
#5
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usb 3.0 card
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 12:37:26 AM UTC-6, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote: On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote: Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. USB3 can be provided two ways. It can be provided by the main chipset (some Intel chipsets, chipsets like AMD A75 - Wikipedia can give you a list). Or, for the majority of people, USB3 comes from a standalone chip made by NEC, Etron, Asmedia, and so on. With those chips, there is a tendency to put a PCI Express single lane interface. That's PCI Express x1. Doing so, saves pins on the chip, and reduces chip cost. That's how you can sell a $25 USB3 PCI Express card. Motherboards have several kinds of PCI Express slots, but we'll concentrate on the PCI Express x1 ones. PCI Express Rev 1.1, x1 lane = 250MB/sec PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec The second of those, does a better job of exposing all of the USB3 capability. For example, if you bought a BlackMagic video capture device with USB3 connector, the software for that device actually tests and verifies that a 500MB/sec lane is present. There are no other devices I'm aware of, where bandwidth testing is involved. So the ideal situations, from best to worst. 1) Chipset USB3 port, with no restriction on the bus connection to the rest of the chipset. The DMI bus or Hypertransport bus connection to the Southbridge in such a case, likely runs 2GB/sec or higher, plenty for a USB3 stream. You don't have to worry about the connection being choked off. And as for implementation, I think the AMD A75 and similar, they didn't design the USB3 logic block themselves, but bought a design (intellectual property) from a company making a successful chip. That means less development cost, to ship a design. 2) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 2.0 slot. You can use a video card slot for this, if one is available. Some motherboards have multiple video card slots. You can plug an x1 card, into an x16 slot. It's a waste, but, you're getting the best. Video card slots tend to support Revision 2 or even Revision 3, for the very highest rate of transfer. No USB3 chip I've heard of, uses PCI Express Revision 3. 3) Plug an add-in card into a Rev 1.1 slot. This is good enough for enclosures where the disk enclosure USB3 adapter chip is limited to 200MB/sec anyway. Such an enclosure, even if you stuffed a high performance SATA SSD into the enclosure, it would be the enclosure chip which was the limiting factor. So in that situation, the low end and quite common PCI Express x1 slot is good enough. There is more to PCI Express bandwidth than just the "plumbing rating". When I quote 250MB/sec, that's raw bitrate on the lane. The typical chipset has rather small buffers fitted at the end of the link, and the buffer size can actually cut the transfer rate in half. You shouldn't assume that the number printed in the Wikipedia article for PCI Express, is the final story. http://www.plxtech.com/files/pdf/tec...yload_Size.pdf The figure on page 2 there, shows the "efficiency" number. You multiply the 250MB/sec number by the "efficiency", to get a better value (trending in the right direction) for what your x1 lane can actually do. Is it easy to find out the buffer size of your chipset buffer ? Nope. It's a trade secret. It would be embarrassing, if everyone knew their 4GB/sec video card slot, wasn't actually doing 4GB/sec. The horror. The UAS protocol here, has a calculated transfer rate of 336MB/sec. But no device to date has achieved that. At least for USB storage. Keep your eyes peeled though, for benchmarks, because some year, they'll fix that. The last time I checked, the best seemed to be around 200MB/sec or so. http://www.nordichardware.com/Archiv...idge-chip.html Plug your new USB3 card into a video card slot... and, enjoy. It's a good thing the last motherboard I bought, has two video card slots. Paul Thanks. I have one PCI Express slot. Could I use that ? I am happy using the on board video, it only uses 128 Mb and I plan to up my RAM to 4 Gbs. It's your choice as to what slot you use. The lack of USB3 peripherals that "need the speed", suggests to me that using the best slot isn't a priority. If you have the BlackMagic USB3 video capture box, then yes, you'd probably want to use the best slot available. Or, buy a motherboard that has native USB3, and not the add-on USB3 type. Paul I have a USB 3 external hard drive. I could use the extra speed for image backups. Canon camera may also benefit. Andy |
#6
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usb 3.0 card
Andy wrote:
I have a USB 3 external hard drive. I could use the extra speed for image backups. Canon camera may also benefit. Andy Let's say, for the sake of argument, you plug the USB3 card into "any old slot" and you get 187MB/sec transfer rate. The fastest hard drive available today for SATA, is around 180MB/sec. Many other hard drives sustain around 135MB/sec. Those would fit within a 187MB/sec limitation. If you had a Revision 2 slot with 500MB/sec lanes, then eventually the USB3 transfer protocols become the limiting factor. Just like on USB2 (60MB/sec), the best you could do was around 35MB/sec. That was a polled protocol limitation of some sort. Paul |
#7
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usb 3.0 card
Charlie+ wrote:
On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 20:22:46 -0800 (PST), Andy wrote as underneath : On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote: Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. SNIP Andy your reader is adding blank reply lines to your replies! C+ He's posting through Google Groups. Paul |
#8
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usb 3.0 card
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 02:28:57 -0500, Paul wrote in
Re usb 3.0 card: Charlie+ wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 20:22:46 -0800 (PST), Andy wrote as underneath : On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote: Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. SNIP Andy your reader is adding blank reply lines to your replies! C+ He's posting through Google Groups. And those extraneous/obnoxious blank lines are a characteristic dysfunction of GGs and their clueless users. I just add the posters to my KF. |
#9
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usb 3.0 card
On Friday, December 6, 2013 12:37:04 AM UTC-6, Charlie+ wrote:
On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 20:22:46 -0800 (PST), Andy wrote as underneath : On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote: Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. SNIP Andy your reader is adding blank reply lines to your replies! C+ I am not using a reader, just the P.O.C. Google. Sorry guy. Andy |
#10
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usb 3.0 card
On Friday, December 6, 2013 8:05:47 AM UTC-6, VinnyB wrote:
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 02:28:57 -0500, Paul wrote in Re usb 3.0 card: Charlie+ wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 20:22:46 -0800 (PST), Andy wrote as underneath : On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:06:42 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote: Andy wrote: What factor of my system is necessary to be able to use the full speed of a USB 3.0 card ? Thanks. SNIP Andy your reader is adding blank reply lines to your replies! C+ He's posting through Google Groups. And those extraneous/obnoxious blank lines are a characteristic dysfunction of GGs and their clueless users. I just add the posters to my KF. Thanks, I appreciate your kindness in not bumming me out with your "negative waves." |
#11
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usb 3.0 card
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 10:08:17 AM UTC-6, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote: I have a USB 3 external hard drive. I could use the extra speed for image backups. Canon camera may also benefit. Andy Let's say, for the sake of argument, you plug the USB3 card into "any old slot" and you get 187MB/sec transfer rate. The fastest hard drive available today for SATA, is around 180MB/sec. Many other hard drives sustain around 135MB/sec. Those would fit within a 187MB/sec limitation. If you had a Revision 2 slot with 500MB/sec lanes, then eventually the USB3 transfer protocols become the limiting factor. Just like on USB2 (60MB/sec), the best you could do was around 35MB/sec. That was a polled protocol limitation of some sort. Paul This is what I have. PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec Your previous post made no mention of transfer protocols. ?? Andy |
#12
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usb 3.0 card
Andy wrote:
This is what I have. PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec Your previous post made no mention of transfer protocols. ?? Andy Scroll down to the table. The newer UAS protocol can do 336MB/sec to a storage device. Which would take more than an add-on chip and a 250MB/sec single lane could handle. http://www.nordichardware.com/Archiv...idge-chip.html At the current time, the fastest enclosure I've heard of, is 200MB/sec. I haven't been scouring the Internet for newer benchmarks, so by now there could be a better chip for the job. But if nothing has changed, you're not going to tax that 336MB/sec limit in the table on the Nordic Hardware page. You would need a better USB3 peripheral chip, as well as a good SSD, to test for the 336MB/sec limit. No hard drive is going to make such a test easy. (It might require one of those USB3 chips that does RAID0 disks.) Paul |
#13
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usb 3.0 card
On Friday, December 6, 2013 9:41:01 PM UTC-6, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote: This is what I have. PCI Express Rev 2.0, x1 lane = 500MB/sec Your previous post made no mention of transfer protocols. ?? Andy Scroll down to the table. The newer UAS protocol can do 336MB/sec to a storage device. Which would take more than an add-on chip and a 250MB/sec single lane could handle. http://www.nordichardware.com/Archiv...idge-chip.html At the current time, the fastest enclosure I've heard of, is 200MB/sec. I haven't been scouring the Internet for newer benchmarks, so by now there could be a better chip for the job. But if nothing has changed, you're not going to tax that 336MB/sec limit in the table on the Nordic Hardware page. You would need a better USB3 peripheral chip, as well as a good SSD, to test for the 336MB/sec limit. No hard drive is going to make such a test easy. (It might require one of those USB3 chips that does RAID0 disks.) Paul I think what you are saying is that you are not sure that there will be any speed increase ? Okey dokey. Andy |
#14
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usb 3.0 card
Andy wrote:
I think what you are saying is that you are not sure that there will be any speed increase ? Okey dokey. Andy The last time I looked, the fastest USB3 enclosure I could find was 200MB/sec. You have to read a *lot* of posts and threads, to find this information manually. That's why I'm not doing this on a continuous basis. Paul |
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