[sno.lcn]

USB 3.0 Testing on the Gigabyte UD3R and UD6
by MIAHALLEN

I recently tested one of the first P55 motherboards to hit the market from Gigabyte, the P55-UD3R.
Please review my article HERE.

A quick recap for those of you who missed it: I found it to be an extremely competent platform, perfectly well suited to overclock, but with lots of performance built in at stock settings as well, thanks to Intel TURBO.

Gigabyte has not been resting on its laurels however, and today I’m beginning a series on their newest additions to the P55 family, the P55A-UD3R and the P55A-UD6, both of which feature two SATA 6Gb/s ports, and two USB 3.0 ports! Although I do not have a SATA 6Gb/s drive to test performance of the new interface, part one of my investigation is an exploration of the new USB 3.0 interface using the UD6 motherboard. These tests do not involve extensive or extreme overclocking. I’ll be looking more at the overclocking potential of these boards very soon.

Click here to continue reading.


Discuss this article below. If you are interested in contributing to the front page (www.overclockers.com), please feel free to contact me.


Thanks,
sno.lcn

[Evilsizer]

now if they go putting USB 3.0 on MATX P55, they better be using the PCIE lanes on P55. even if Gen1 of pcie they can still use more the one lane to get close to theoretical max bandwidth.

i dont really understand why they saw the need to go using PCIE lanes from the cpu. they should leave those alone unless USB 3.0 is being used on single slot GPU motherboards. IMO that would make more sense to go that route..


sometimes i just wonder why they do somethings i think is really backwards. im not just talking about GB...

[fire2havoc]

Interesting read and impressive speeds for the USB 3.0 + Turbo. Nearly as fast as SATA.

[I.M.O.G.]

Great writeup Miahallen.

There has been discussion of Asus's offering also in other forum threads, as well as differences in the implementation of USB 3.0 on the two platforms.

Will there be a followup article about these differences and what they mean for performance?

If your interested, I could talk to Asus about a review sample so you can test their board in a similar way.

[MIAHALLEN]

I would love to...in the article, my quote from Gigabyte does address this in marketing speech:

Key to our design is the DMI bus (10Gb/s) between the CPU and P55 chipset because any device that is connected to the chipset (audio card, RAID sub-system, even the drive with your OS) will have to share that bus. So if you’re loading the chipset’s SATA, USB 2.0 and PCI-E bandwidth then it makes sense to use Turbo mode. Adding a bridge chip (such as the PLX chip) doesn’t provide extra DMI bus bandwidth, so there is a potential bottle neck!

But the meat of the message is clear: If you want maximum performance out of USB 3.0, the best way to do it is via a PCIe lane directly from the CPU.

Now, I'm not claiming this is the best answer for everyone, and if your an SLI gamer, obviously that option will not be availible. But if your graphical demands are lower, this is a great way to run it. And, as I have been saying over and over if you want the best of everything you're looking at the wrong platform, you should be looking at LGA1366

That being said, I'd definitely be interested in comparing the performance of one of the other options

[MattNo5ss]

Wow, this was a great article. I really enjoyed reading it, good job. Thanks for your hard work and superb write-up.

[MIAHALLEN]

Cheers Matt

Stay posted, in the next couple days I'll follow up with a pair of Intel X25-M 160GB drives One for the OS on SATA, and one in the USB 3.0 device to find the absolute max

[MIAHALLEN]

Well, it's taken a little while, but the article is finished, and should be posted within the next day or two...I'll let you all know

[Evilsizer]

NOICE!

[MIAHALLEN]

follow up article now posted:
http://www.overclockers.com/gigabyte...-pushed-limit/

[edcharly]

Hi guys, I have just read the usb 3.0 review. I have the same issues with a gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R. As you described "large drops in performance accompanied by an audible click and the sound of the drive spinning down, as if the drive lost power." I have updated bios to latest version, updated nec usb 3.0 chip to latest firmware and updated drivers to latest. Issues still happens. has anyone found any solution?

I'm using Win7 pro 64bits.

Thanks a lot and sorry for my english level.

Bye.

[RGone]

I went and read the related articles and he was not really testing that click. He only said it occurred and then I googled the title of this thread and there was no mention of such happening on any more Gigabyte motherboards. With this thread being over a year and a half old and no replies in that length of time, I doubt anyone has had a great issue with the problem and the thread was about P55 chipset boards not X58.

So that you can begin to look for other answers and not be only waiting on some answer in a 1.5 year old thread, I googled X58 and click and drive slowing or spinning down and there were no real hits of such a power issue with the X58 motherboard. I expect you may have a failing motherboard or perhaps a power supply as I guess that your motherboard worked for a while and then began to exhibit the behavior since X58 has been out for sometime.

[MIAHALLEN]

Originally Posted by edcharly

Hi guys, I have just read the usb 3.0 review. I have the same issues with a gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R. As you described "large drops in performance accompanied by an audible click and the sound of the drive spinning down, as if the drive lost power." I have updated bios to latest version, updated nec usb 3.0 chip to latest firmware and updated drivers to latest. Issues still happens. has anyone found any solution?

I'm using Win7 pro 64bits.

Thanks a lot and sorry for my english level.

Bye.

I still do not know what caused the problem. And I didn't follow up much, the hardware was only used for the review, so I cannot really answer your question sorry. I suspect it was the external drive unit I was using....but its tough to say for sure.

[edcharly]

I wrote here because there is a lot of info Googling " nec usb 3.0 problem " but no solution. Mobo uses renesas/NEC 720200F1 chip and issues like on off cycles and drops in transfer speed are usual. I read in manual something suspect about usb ports:

South Bridge:
Up to 12 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (8 on the back panel) (Note 4)
(4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)

(Note 4) Two share the same ports with USB 3.0 and another two with eSATA.

I don't know what gigabyte wants to say with Note 4. it seems some type of usb combination problem.

THANKS A LOT FOR ANSWERS.