Performance Storage Subsystem - USB 3.0 & SSD SATA3 (6G)

Performance Storage Subsystem - USB 3.0

With the modern age controllers we started adding SSD performance numbers measured on such interfaces (when applicable). Putting these in nicely styled charts would be better, but with technology so new we just do not have anything out there yet to compare to, so here are some raw peak performance numbers. We use an A-DATA N002 Solid State Drive which has both a both SATA2 and USB 3.0 port.

Above, you can see a N002 series A-DATA Solid State Drive running over the USB 3.0 controller on this motherboard. The implementation works well. Obviously the N002 write performance is limited at roughly 200 MB/sec meaning we can max out bandwidth on USB 3.0 quite easily.

SATA 6 Gbps performance

Below we show SATA3 6 Gbps AHCI performance with a SATA3 (6 Gbps) SSD. 

The SATA3 based SSD connected to the SATA3 (6Gbps) Intel controller. AHCI mode is enabled in the BIOS, especially with SSDs that helps a little on peak performance. The internal Intel SATA3 6 Gbps controller is the fastest of any motherboard really. Though admittedly the latest AMD Series 8 and 9 chipsets also offer really good performance.

Here's the same SSD, now we connected it to the ASMedia controllers, also SATA3 6 Gbps. It's not bad, but you just lost say 25% of your peak bandwidth performance.