Z11-13 Express Card bandwidth

Does anyone know the bandwidth of the Z1's ExpressCard? I've been experimenting with a USB 3 hub and various drives and am not impressed with the speeds, and wonder if the pci-e bus lane is especially slow or if the USB 3 cards I'm using or the various portable drives' speeds are the bottleneck. If I wanted to invest in an external SSD via EC USB 3, would it be as fast as an internal, sata II or is the USB 3 hub or the pci-e limiting factors.

 

not a direct answer, but it's PCIe 1.1 speeds, on a single lane (official Intel clarksdale chipset specs). Technically it's a PCIe 2.0 x1 lane with half clocks.

 

lovelaptops, the EC interface on the Z runs on 2.5Gb/s. With overhead and stuff, so in real conditions, you will be capped at around 120-130MB/s at the bottom line. Tested with a 10$ shipped AKE USB3.0 EC (Fresco Logic FL1000 chip) and a Vertex3 in a USB3.0 case. Perhaps you can gain better speeds with a card featuring a NEC chip, I did not test that so far.

 

Thanks Pyro. That really helps clarify things. I actually did test it with a iOgear USB3 hub with the NEC chip, and I got about 70 mb/s avg and 95 mb/s max (HD Tune) with an iOmega prestige USB3 5400 rpm portable disk drive. Is it the case (i.e. its controller chip) that you think got you to 130 mb/s, or could it be the power supply? I was using a 900 ma power supply that came with the USB 3 hub.

Follow up to that, when you say "overhead and stuff" drops the real world cap to 130 mb/s from theoretical 2.56gb/s, is that just with external mehcanical HDDs, or for any use of the EC USB3 hub?

It's amazing how hard it is to find information about this online. As usual, Pyro, you are a godsend.

 

Well, 95mb/s max on a rotating drive is not bad. The HDD is the limiting factor in your case. SSDs are faster than the expresscard interface on the Z so thats why I max out the EC and USB3 card. As far as you don't get some issues when using the drive, i.e. data corruption or disconnects, your power supply should be fine. I dont think that the power supply affects speed at all, as long the device works without issues.

This means that the actual transmission needs checksums, protocol handshakes, waits etc. The real transmission speed, e.g. of a file is slower than the theoretical 2.5Gb/s bandwith, since not all of the 2.5Gb/s are provided to the file transfer layer - probably the interface DOES use all of the 2.5Gb/s, though. It helps to disconnect USB devices from the Z's USB2.0 ports and deactivate WiFi, so the full PCIe bandwidth is available to the EC. Theoretically - I did not benchmark this yet, though.

Appreciate your feedback, I wish I had more time for the forum, I am in my finals now which delays the publication of my two Z1 mod projects I have been working for a couple of weeks now. Stay tuned.

 

I didn't have any USB 2 ports in use but my wifi was on, so I'll try it with it off and see if it makes a difference. My NEC-based controller seems to need auxiliary power either from it's AC adapter or a power plug-in from a USB2 port, so I assume the former is the better way to go - at least in theory. Are you saying that neither your eSATA EC card nor you USB3 EC card require any auxiliary power? If so, I think I will get the same products you are using!

And does it ever show! After weeks of "Pyro-free" threads, your fingerprints are all over the Sony forum today. School comes first, but you are a tremendous asset here and you have well earned that reputation - and I know for a fact I am not the only one who thinks so, not by a long shot.

 

ESATA interface does not bring power to devices, so there is no difference between eSATA cards power-wise. My AKE USB3.0 card does have a DC/DC converter builtin and provides 900mA power to the port. There is not even a connector where you could power the card from. I tested some USB3.0 and USB2.0 HDDs directly on the card (no power supply needed, no second USB port for power via Y-Cable needed) and they have worked without any issues so far. These 10$ I spent on the card were one of the best investments for my Z1.

Well, and the eGPU thread - I am so excited to share the work I have done.

 

Wow! That's really quite remarkable to me, given that I couldn't get my iOmega prestige drive to run off the iOgear USB3 EC port with the NEC chip. So I'm wondering, do you think it's the drive, the port, or possibly both? Interestingly, the iOmega drive both lit up and was clearly spinning without any auxiliary power, but the Z did not recognize the portable drive. Any thoughts appreciated,

 

That's really hard to say. Is the drive detected at a USB2.0 port? Normally, if the drive spins up properly, it should work. The most current is drawn when the drive spins up, so if it passes that stage without continuous clicking, it should have enough power to work. Did you try to connect the drive to the EC first and push in the card after that? Other question: the drive is not recognized - that means nothing happens in device manager after you plugged it in? Watch the device manager while you plug in the card, it auto-refreshes if new devices are added, so you see what's going on.

If it still refuses to work, perhaps it is worth trying a Fresco Logic card. They are really cheap, sit flush in the Z's slot and work very well for me. I will upload some updated drivers soon.

 

Thanks, but I thought you recommended the AKE card?

 

Yes I do. AKE is the manufacturer of the card (I think that's some noname brand) and they use a Fresco Logic FL 1000 PCIe to USB3.0 host controller chip in the card. It's the same card I am talking about all the time. I have only this USB3.0 card.
It's the same with Sony laptops with Intel processors.

The card works well and I can recommend it, it is very cheap, too so a great deal. I got mine from some random taiwanese/chinese ebay seller in less than a week.