Reasons not to go on the USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps now, especially on P55 chipsets
1)USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps is not native to P55 express chipset.
From what I know, USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps are currently available on some on the Asus and Gigabyte boards. They uses 3rd party party controller and chips from NEC and Marvell. Both Asus and Gigabyte have different ways of adopting USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps onto their board. Asus uses a bridge chip which makes use of 4 PCI-E 1.1 from the ICH10R providing the bandwidth for SATA 6Gbps(Mainly talking about SATA 6Gbps first). A bridge chip means more cost for the manufacturing of the board itself. Well on the Gigabyte side, they used an PCI-E x16 lane from the integrated PCI-E lanes in the processor itself, which means if you’re using powerful graphics card on your PCI-E x16, there most likely will be a bottleneck. The technology on the P55 chipset motherboard is not perfect. So why pay for something that won’t work well compared to say something that will be cheaper in the near future which makes all USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps native to the Intel chipset?
2)USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps are not mainstream. Of course USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps is blazingly fast. I’m very sure that with USB3.0, you can say byebye to firewire, the older USB 2.0. But with new revisions on the USB, version 3.0 needs new cable. New interface on the hardware side. This means your external hard disk drive need to be USB 3.0 compatible and currently on the market right now(when I’m writing this) , there is only ONE external hard drive that uses USB 3.0 interface. Other than that, is USB 3.0 really needed? Most conventional hard drives reads at maybe a speed of 200MB/s? USB 3.0 transfer data at 5Gb/s which is equals to 625 MB/s. See? No matter how fast USB 3.0, the maximum rate you’re going to read from the drive will be 200MB/s. But from here, you can certainly see the huge difference compared to previous USB, the USB 2.0 which transfers at a maximum of 480Mb/s=60MB/s. Same thing for SATA 6Gbps. If you’re not using extremely fast Solid State Drives that transfer at 250MB/s, no point getting SATA 6Gbps. 6Gbps=750MB/s. Who will reach that kind of speed? 100 solid state drives in Raid0?
I am starting to question the real need for SATA 6Gbps. I mean if everyone is going to use normal hard drives and get stuck there, SATA 1.0 is already enough for you. Come on people! Move on and get solid state drives! They are certainly worth the money now. It is future products that you are buying!
And by the way, in case you don’t know, Intel is going to integrate USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps into their chipset only in 2011. AMD is coming up with their new chipsets very soon and I believe they will integrate USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps into their new SB chipsets. SB850 ftw! BUY AMD.
