New Technology: USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s

Some of us tec savy gusy have been waiting for this:  the arrivel of USB 3.0!

Even though its not full blown yet,  ASUS has exposed a high-end motherboard with onboard USB 3.0 ports. This P6X58 premium motherboard also features SATA  6GB/s ports, another first.

Currently,  USB 2.0 is standard and what we all use.   The new 3.0 ports have a blue tab while the 2.o will have a gray tab. It would take a 2.o about 30 seconds to download 1GB on a flash drive and 3 seconds for a 3.o to download the same 1GB.   Unfortunately, there are no devices on the market yet to harness this technology.

The same goes for SATA 6GB: there are no devifes that support SATA 6 as of yet.   Currently, SATA  has a speed of 3GB/s.

SATA (serial ATA) is the current connection standard for hard drives, disk drives, and solidstate drives.   There are some solidstate drives that have maxed out the current standard and thus are the most to benefit form the upcoming standard.

What does all this mean to the average PC user: not much. (for the hard core games a whole lot, and they already know what this means)

This is fairly new technology, all though its good to see that it is out on hardware rather then paper, means that devises that support USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s will come out soon.  Imagine downloading your hi resolution 600 or so pics form you camera in a matter of seconds via USB 3.0.  Or booting you pc in less than 10 seconds (via SATA 6GBs and a solidstate hard drive). I expect the mother board to be over $400.  The average user probably will not see this stuff at home until another two years or so.

More in depth stuff about the ASUS P6X58 is found here.