New driver for ASMedia's USB 3.0 host controller shows its worth

Oct 14, 2011 17:01 GMT  ·  By

The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard is already fast, but not quite at its fastest possible point, something that ASUS isn't going to lie down and accept, not if its software has anything to say about it.

ASUS created a new driver for the ASMedia USB 3.0 host controllers, one that implements support for the UASP protocol.

UASP stands for USB Attached SCSI Protocol and, in addition to increasing transfer speeds, allows for command queuing.

It also removes some software overheads and can handle out-of-order completion of file copies.

In other words, if one chooses to copy multiple files simultaneously, said files will be copied based on size instead of their order, as the Bulk Only Transfer protocol does.

The actual performance boost claims were rather ambitious, ASUS saying that, in UASP mode, there was an increase of 170%.

This is more than what their Turbo software managed on the same system and during the same test operation (127%).

The driver should work on any motherboard that has an ASMedia USB 3.0 host controller.

For those who would like a second opinion, the folks over at VR-Zone conducted a couple of tests of their own.

At the end of it, they could safely report that, in HD Tune Pro 4.61, they got an average read speed of 261.6 MB/s, about 37MB/s more than without UASP enabled.

Meanwhile, the write speed was 242.6MB/s on average, though peak moments did go as high as 293MB/s. This implies an increase of 33MB/s.

Not exactly the 170% maximum possible, but still quite a leap, especially for a free upgrade. After this, there is little doubt that all other makers of USB 3.0 controllers will hurry up and provide UASP support.

Go here for ASUS' full analysis of the matter and to see a list of both motherboards and storage devices compatible with the new software).