USB 3.0 PCI Cards...Do they exist?

[DragonBorn1511]

Hey everyone,

So PCI USB 2.0 cards exist, and PCIe USB 3.0 cards exist.....however, do PCI USB 3.0 cards exist? Because my motherboard manufacturer was so intelligent, they thought to put the PCIex1 directly underneath the PCIex16 slot, so with a graphics card that isn't shit (dual slot), the x1 is covered..... or maybe......I was the "intelligent" one for buying their motherboard......either way PCI is all I have to work with haha

 

[4745454b]

Probably not. I'd have to stop and do the math, but even PCIe 3.0 1x isn't fast enough to handle full USB 3.0 speeds. There just isn't enough bandwidth to provide USB 3.0 speeds.

 

[DragonBorn1511]

Probably not. I'd have to stop and do the math, but even PCIe 3.0 1x isn't fast enough to handle full USB 3.0 speeds. There just isn't enough bandwidth to provide USB 3.0 speeds.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Port-SuperSpeed-Adapter-Power/dp/B00AWP9LMG/ref=sr_1_62?ie=UTF8&qid=1505680931&sr=8-62&keywords=usb+3.0+pci+card

So it does exist....but it's basically motherboard money anyway

 

[4745454b]

From the link you gave it says it's limited by the PCI bus to 1.3Gbps. According to the USB 3.0 wiki.

The "SuperSpeed" bus provides for a transfer mode at a nominal rate of 5.0 Gbit/s, in addition to the three existing transfer modes. Accounting for the encoding overhead, the raw data throughput is 4 Gbit/s, and the specification considers it reasonable to achieve 3.2 Gbit/s (0.4 GB/s or 400 MB/s) or more in practice

So it will provide ~25% of the speed of what USB 3.0 should do. I wouldn't even bother.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0

 

[DragonBorn1511]

From the link you gave it says it's limited by the PCI bus to 1.3Gbps. According to the USB 3.0 wiki.

The "SuperSpeed" bus provides for a transfer mode at a nominal rate of 5.0 Gbit/s, in addition to the three existing transfer modes. Accounting for the encoding overhead, the raw data throughput is 4 Gbit/s, and the specification considers it reasonable to achieve 3.2 Gbit/s (0.4 GB/s or 400 MB/s) or more in practice

So it will provide ~25% of the speed of what USB 3.0 should do. I wouldn't even bother.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0

What actually are the maximum speeds on USB 3.0 and 2.0? Because my understanding of it (and from actually using both on different systems) I usually see USB 2.0 topout at 30MB/S and USB 3.0 at 100MB/S (depending on the type of file transfer ofcourse)

 

[4745454b]

Again, according to the wiki I linked, USB3.0 should hit 5.0Gbps. And due to encoding overhead the actual rate is more like 4.0Gbps. (divided by 8 for bit to byte and you are looking at 500MBps in raw speed.) And your link says the max the PCI bus allows is 1.3Gbps. Which comes out to 162.5MBps. Yes the device you plug in matters as well. But for the cost of that card that was linked earlier, you won't see anything remotely like the speed you should see if you had real USB 3.0. Meaning you might as well just buy a 2.0 card? Though yes, it is 2x+ more speedy than 2.0 which tops out at 40MBps.

 

[DragonBorn1511]

Again, according to the wiki I linked, USB3.0 should hit 5.0Gbps. And due to encoding overhead the actual rate is more like 4.0Gbps. (divided by 8 for bit to byte and you are looking at 500MBps in raw speed.) And your link says the max the PCI bus allows is 1.3Gbps. Which comes out to 162.5MBps. Yes the device you plug in matters as well. But for the cost of that card that was linked earlier, you won't see anything remotely like the speed you should see if you had real USB 3.0. Meaning you might as well just buy a 2.0 card? Though yes, it is 2x+ more speedy than 2.0 which tops out at 40MBps.

Hmm interesting...I've never seen over 100Mb/s but then the only USB 3.0 devices I ever use are external hard drives.

 

[4745454b]

If they are external spinning drives that might be the issue. You are restricted to the speed of the drive. If you have a flash drive, give that a shot. Though not all flash drives are fast/high speed drives. You'll get faster than USB 2.0 speeds, but nothing close to what real USB 3.0 can do.