USB thumb drives quicker on Nvidia nForce boards

Posted at: 4:08am 12th October 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

OCZ claims that Nvidia’s Southbridge offers quicker transfer speeds

The humble Southbridge is often driven into hiding when you talk about chipsets. While front side bus speeds and PCI-E lanes grab all the headlines, no one seems to want to talk about the number of USB ports supported, or the S-ATA controller. The reason for this is probably because Southbridges are even duller than Coldplay, but OCZ reckons that its new ATV Turbo Flash Drive is much quicker with an Nvidia Southbridge (MCP).

OCZ claims that the drive uses ‘the latest and highest performing chips to reach transfer speeds not previously seen from any other flash drive.’ However, you can apparently only achieve these speeds with the correct Southbridge. OCZ’s director of marketing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Tobias Brinkmann, told Custom PC: ‘To reach the maximum performance of the device (33-35MB/sec read and 26-30MB/sec write), it’s necessary to use an Nvidia based board [chipset] like the 680 SLI.’

Brinkmann gave the example of Intel’s 82801 Southbridge, which he says has ‘a limit on the Southbridge of only 25MB/sec, while Nvidia’s 680SLI chipset does 30.5MB/sec.’

See here for more details on the drive.