Which will be faster?

1

Hello -

I notice that the USB3-SATA-U3 uses an ASMedia 1051e chipset, whereas the USB3-SATA-UASP1 uses an ASMedia 1053 chipset (latter is newer, I believe).

I’ll be using the dock in conjunction with an Intel 520 series SSD, permanently connected to a 2012 Mac Mini as an externally-mounted boot drive.

Form factor is less important than overall performance.

Does the new chipset offer increased performance, or will the two units be roughly equal?

Thanks,

  • John
2

Hi John-

Performance across OS X, Windows 7, and Windows 8 was roughly equal- I might have seen 5% better speeds on the 1053, however this was well within the realm of standard deviation.

Both docks support UASP so as support for this faster protocol (currently BOT is the commonly used transfer protocol) becomes more widely available both will be able to show improved speeds. Both also support SATA 3 6gb/sec drives.

I would make the decision based on available desk space: personally I hate the idea of something laying down taking up precious square inches, however cats might prefer the nice warm drive as a bed.

I hope this helps. We’ll be working on a blog post comparing real world speeds shortly, so feel free to let us know if you’ve got other questions.

Best wishes-

Jeff Everett
MCITP Enterprise Support Technician
Plugable Technologies

3

Hi,

Sorry for this somewhat late reply, but did you all ever do that blog post on real works speeds? Or maybe I just can’t find it?

Thanks,
Jim

4

Hi Jim-

Thanks for asking, however the info above is still our most current: initial testing didn’t reveal substantial speed differences between the units.

We do have a post on speeds planned, to be notified when this is published you can like us on facebook, follow us on twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed to be notified when this gets published:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Plugable

Best wishes-

Jeff Everett
Plugable Technologies

5

I ended up buying the plugable.com “lay-flat” dock with the ASMedia 1053 chip.

I’m using it with a 2012 Mac Mini as my “external boot platform”. For a drive, I use an Intel 520 series 180gb SSD.

Using the benchmark app “Blackmagic Speed Test”, I’m getting read speeds of 410+mbps and write speeds of 247mbps. No sleep issues or “random disconnects”.

Works for me!

6

Hi John-

Thanks for posting with your results, those are some pretty fantastic speeds! If you have a moment to verify if this is the drive you have, it would be greatly appreciated. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product…

We’re glad to hear you’re happy with the USB3-UASP1.

Best-

Jeff

7

Hi,

Are the “mbps” numbers megaBITS per second? Or, megaBYTES per second?

Thanks,
Jim

8

The link you posted above:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product…

… appears to be the drive I have. Intel 520 series, 180gb.

“Are the “mbps” numbers megaBITS per second? Or, megaBYTES per second?”

I looked through the documentation provided with “Blackmagic Disk Speed Test” (for the Mac), and could not find ANYthing saying “megabits” or “megabytes”.

Running the same Intel 520 through a USB2 dock, I got speeds of:
write: 38.2 mbps
read: 38.9 mbps

Switching to the Plugable “lay-flat” dock, I get speeds of:
write: 247.2 mbps
read: 410.6 mbps

The read speeds seem close to what folks get on the _internal_ SATA connection with an SSD mounted internally, and close to what others get when using an SSD connected via Thunderbolt.

9

Hi Joe-

Thanks so much for verifying what disk you have.

I’ve also reviewed the documentation from BlackMagic, and while I can’t find anything there to verify whether it measures in bits or Bytes, I can verify that it measures in Bytes.

Hope this helps!

Best-

Jeff