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Now Available: Motherboards Equipped with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps

Posted 11/05/09 at 07:43:08 PM  by Jason Barry

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With some of the first USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices already released, the first capable motherboards are now available for purchase. Asus and Gigabyte were both known to be working on new boards earlier this summer and both companies are now shipping their latest models.

Asus is shipping two boards, one with a P55 chipset, and the other with an X58. Due to the single lane bandwidth bottleneck of the P55 chipset, Asus uses a bridge chip (PLX8613) and four PCIe lanes so the board can run in SLI and Crossfire modes. Gigabyte is shipping seven different boards in the P55A series. Gigabyte opted to avoid the bridge chip so dual-card modes will not be enabled in the board.

These motherboards are shipping despite delayed chipset releases from Intel supporting the latest interfaces. Manufacturers do not expect to have new Intel chipsets with USB 3.0 support until 2011.

Asus P7P55D-E-Premium

COMMENTS:6
TAGS: asus, gigabyte, motherboards, hardware, USB 3.0, sata 6gbps, intel chipsets
COMMENTS
avatarkeep PCI for now...

Submitted by keithfreitag on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 8:40am

I got 2 PCI Cards, a X-Fi Elite Pro card with it's breakout box and a Firewire 800 card that will soon be replaced bc of eSata.  I saw the X-Fi fatality PCIe card with the optical in/out, that's what I use my breakout box for mostly, so I might be getting rid of my PCI cards soon enough but for now, leave them be.  PATA ports need to go and so do the FLOPPY ports.  USB sticks for RAID drivers and SATA Optical drives are cheap unless it's Blu-Ray but is Blu-Ray even available on a PATA interface...  I doubt it. 

Steve Jobs is the Devil and Blu-Ray, so suck on that new iMac owners.

Keith

PS - What good is better than HD resolution on an iMac if nothing in the near future supports it.  All your 1080P movies will have to be stretched out to fill and then it won't look so crisp :(

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avatarBet'cha Intel comes around.

Submitted by JohnP on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 12:59pm

I am sure Intel could put out USB 3.0 and SATA 6 chipset a lot quicker than 2011. With the ASUS PCI card and now mobos, the heat is on Intel. I wonder if they are waiting for Light Peak?

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avatarFirst thought - secks.

Submitted by Valerie on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 7:07am

First thought - secks. Second thought - it actually might end up as buttsecks...

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avatarneed case

Submitted by russianguy96 on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 5:50am

now all we need is a case that has USB 3.0 

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avatarNot bad

Submitted by 457R4L on Thu, 11/05/2009 - 7:37pm

All in all looks like a decent board but I would prefer if they ditched the pci slots for pci-e and used onboard x-fi instead of VIA sound.

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avatarNope

Submitted by Moneyless on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 10:23am

I think the PCI slots are fine, besides motherboards should still keep at least one PCI slot for a bit longer, lots of stuff still uses PCI. Some of us don't want/need to spend $150 upgrading to the PCI-E version of the same soundcard we already have.

Also, it uses Realtek  sound, like most motherboards' onboard audio. I haven't seen a motherboard that uses VIA for sound in a while. And on-board X-Fi would raise the price of the board, especially if they actually put the X-Fi DAC and it's required assisting components. To that point, most "X-Fi" audio daughterboards you see with high end motherboards these days aren't "real" X-Fis. They're the same crappy thing as onboard, the motherboard vendor just licenses some X-Fi software technologies.

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