Not so long ago submitted the final specification standards USB3 and SATA3. Motherboards Gigabyte P55A supports these standards, and the source has published additional information regarding the use of these interfaces. The owner of the computer can use one of three options for the system. In the first version of the video card will work at half capacity PCIe (x8), USB3 or SATA3 used. In the second version of the video card runs at full speed (x16), enabled Crossfire / SLI (x8, x8), USB3 and SATA3 will run at half speed. The third option of installing ─ 3 graphic cards, for example, tri-CrossFire and SLI + PhysX, but then cannot use the x1 slots, or eSATA.

The first diagram (top right) shows the scenario for the allocation of bandwidth between PCIe video card and chips USB3/SATA3. Processors Intel Lynnfield have 16 lines embedded PCIe 2.0, and the P55 chipset has 8 lines of PCIe 1.0 and USB3 with SATA3, each of which takes 1 lane PCIe 2.0. To USB3 and SATA3 worked at full speed, they must be connected to the lines of PCIe 2.0. Thus, to chips USB3/SATA3 could get 1 PCIe 2.0, the video card should work at half speed (x8), and the remaining 6 bands PCIe 2.0 is lost. Of course, half-speed PCIe affects the performance of the graphics subsystem, which may be noticeable in the video games and viewing high-quality videos.

The second (top left) shows a variant in which the video card runs at full speed x16, not leaving for chips USB3/SATA3 a single line of PCIe 2.0. In this case, the share of chips USB3/SATA3 would get 2 lanes of PCIe 1.0 chipset P55. This will affect the speed of data transmission, ie USB3 and SATA3 devices will operate at half speed, as in the interface USB2/SATA2.

In the third diagram (lower right) shows what happens if the user wants to Crossfire / SLI, the video card working at the speed x8/x8, and, similarly, USB3/SATA3 operate at half speed.

The latter scheme (bottom left) depicts a scenario where the user runs the tri-Crossfire or SLI + PhysX, where the first two x16 PCIe slots are for the 8 lines from the processor and the latest x16 PCIe slot, get 4 lines of the chipset P55, leaving only 4 line. Of these 4 lines of 2 are intended for chip Gigabit LAN, ie, the controllers eSATA, USB3, SATA3, as well as 2 slots x1 PCIe is only 2 lines, which are clearly not enough. In this case, eSATA port and 2 PCIe will be disabled.

To solve this problem, manufacturers have to use the chip switch PLX, which would entail additional costs of $ 20-25. Gigabyte is going to release their own motherboards with support USB3/SATA3 fairly quickly and at a lower price than competitors, and notify the user with any issues they may encounter while working with the board Gigabyte P55A.