TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY
 

   Instead of using a USB flash drive to test USB hubs from this day forward we will be using the Zalman ZM-MH200 U3 dual bay docking station coupled with an Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD in an effort not only to simply max out the performance of any USB 3.0 controller but also to be able to perform every write test. Of course the testing methodology will be almost identical to the one we use when testing storage related devices. So we will be using our standard selection of suites such as the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -when possible- speeds), AID64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB-read/write speeds) and finally the quite old yet reliable ATTO 2.46 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs.

   Like always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to April 20th 2012. For comparison purposes we also benchmarked our mainboard USB 3.0 controller directly (rear USB port) to see if and how much performance you lose (or gain) when using a USB hub instead.