14 DAY TRIAL // Gigabyte has launched yet another blue device in its long and wide family of PC-related products. This once, instead of releasing a customized blue graphics card or motherboard, the company is interested in making an offering to speed enthusiasts. It unwrapped not so long ago the GA-USB3 PCI Express expansion card that will allow any old and current system to enjoy the benefits of the new universal serial bus standard.
Even though USB 3.0 is still underrepresented, it is not as scarce as a few months ago, when ASUS, ECS, MSI, VIA, HP and Gigabyte itself, among others, had yet to release any USB 3.0-supporting products, whether motherboards, expansion cards or adapters. The frustration of speed hopefuls was understandable, considering the dream-like ten times higher data-transfer rates that USB 3.0 could theoretically achieve compared with the 2.0 version.
Gigabyte was recently revealed to be working on an upcoming motherboard that, while based on AMD's 890GX chipset, has onboard USB 3.0 support, with two such connectors. Still, there is no clear indication of exactly when this board will debut. As such, the company has decided to offer a substitute, especially considering that, now, there is a reasonable variety of devices compatible with the new standard.
The device is dubbed the GA-USB3.0 PCI-Express expansion card and operates on the PCI Express x1 interface. It uses a 2oz copper blue PCB and boasts an MOLEX power plug through which connected devices are supplied with up to three times more watts than otherwise possible. The number of actual SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports that the GA-USB3.0 provides is equal to two.
The company has already made this product widely available and has given it a price tag of $39.99, which is the equivalent of 31 Euro. For end-users that are interested in motherboards with actual onboard support for the new standard, Gigabyte has also been recently revealed to be working on an AMD-based motherboard with two such connectors.