Friday, February 11th 2011

ASRock Intros Utility to Speed Up USB

ASRock released a nifty little software utility that steps up USB transfer rates. The ASRock XFast USB utility is also able to speed up USB 3.0 flash drives, which are well within the 5 Gb/s theoritical maximum of the interface. OCWorkbench did a "before and after" test of the utility as part of its Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 review. The portable SSD managed transfer rates of 156 MB/s before using the utility, which then jumped up to 241.32 MB/s after using it. SiSoft SANDRA was used for measurements. More tests can be found here.
Source: OCWorkbench
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21 Comments on ASRock Intros Utility to Speed Up USB

#1
araditus
??? How ??? This seems very interesting indeeed, I believe its true, but I dont understand how there could be a bottleneck in the first place :confused:
Posted on Reply
#2
bear jesus
I wonder what exactly it does to speed things up, the increase of 85mb/s from using this on that setup is very impressive although I'm curious if other devices could possibly get a higher increase.
Posted on Reply
#3
RejZoR
It's all about buffering and the chunk size. If you copy 1 file 500MB in size it will probably max out any drive. If you copy 50.000 files that are also 500MB in size it will take forever to copy.
So this utility basically turns those 50.000 files into 1 massive chunk and transfers it in a different way.
In theory you should get similar results by using TeraCopy program to transfer files. I remember this one always maxed out my flash drives and also helped on Windows Vista where Explorer had incredibly slow transfer rate but TeraCopy maxed it out easily.
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#5
LittleLizard
Ok. Either the ASRock R&D team found a blackhole loop on the usb ports OR this is #$&&. I support the former :)
Posted on Reply
#7
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
probably some form of cache

i'm going to test it now, see if it helps a USB 2.0 flash drive on a 3.0 port on my gigabyte board.


edit: only works on asrock mobos. i know that will be possible to fake, but i'll leave that to more experienced modders.
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#8
Dave65
Dunno how it works but it does,it came with my Extreme 6 board.
Posted on Reply
#9
AlienIsGOD
Vanguard Beta Tester
Ill try this out on my GFs AMD rig and see how it works :D
Posted on Reply
#10
Roph
+1 for TeraCopy. :)
Posted on Reply
#11
Delta6326
Wow this sounds sweet! hope it works well!
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#12
blibba
My motherboard is supported!
Posted on Reply
#13
Unregistered
RejZoRIt's all about buffering and the chunk size. If you copy 1 file 500MB in size it will probably max out any drive. If you copy 50.000 files that are also 500MB in size it will take forever to copy.
So this utility basically turns those 50.000 files into 1 massive chunk and transfers it in a different way.
In theory you should get similar results by using TeraCopy program to transfer files. I remember this one always maxed out my flash drives and also helped on Windows Vista where Explorer had incredibly slow transfer rate but TeraCopy maxed it out easily.
I checked out their web site and they have some other nice little utilities including a clipboard extender. DL'ed everything.

Thanks man. :toast:
Posted on Edit | Reply
#14
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
looks like they found a nifty way to increase the bitrate without corrupting any of the data. maybe a voltage bump and an increase in frequency?
Posted on Reply
#15
TheLaughingMan
We are overlooking an easy way this is done. They may have simply found a glitch in their own BIOS or board drivers that reduces the throughput of USB 3. This could simply be a driver update to use USB 3 as specified now and they just disguised it as a "utility" to attract attention.
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#16
Unregistered
TheLaughingManWe are overlooking an easy way this is done. They may have simply found a glitch in their own BIOS or board drivers that reduces the throughput of USB 3. This could simply be a driver update to use USB 3 as specified now and they just disguised it as a "utility" to attract attention.
My thoughts exactly!
Posted on Edit | Reply
#19
A Cheese Danish
Hmm very interesting. I kind of figured it would only work on ASRock boards.
Posted on Reply
#20
blibba
TheLaughingManWe are overlooking an easy way this is done. They may have simply found a glitch in their own BIOS or board drivers that reduces the throughput of USB 3. This could simply be a driver update to use USB 3 as specified now and they just disguised it as a "utility" to attract attention.
This isn't a driver update. It's an application that runs in the background and launches on startup.

EDIT: I already use terracopy. Is there any point in using this as well?
Posted on Reply
#21
Tartaros
In the end most of us are interested in teracopy instead of the asrock thing xDDD.
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