if you bought a USB 4 drive and you're not getting the speeds you expected there's a
couple of reasons why but the main one is usb4 is still kind of a mess
hey internet I have the world's fastest USB 4 Drive in my hand and I can confirm the zeit
drive is indeed the fastest USB 4 Drive I've ever seen in fact I'll admit it's actually
the only USB 4 Drive I've ever seen and I know you're saying but Gordon you've been
able to buy USB 4 Drive since last year in fact I got a couple right here for you the
Oracle USB 4.0 drive and the acasis USB 4.0 drive but let me tell you something internet
if you see the boxes and the labels and the usb4 and people saying these things are fast
you're kind of being a little bit fooled because these drives are not really usb4 to the letter of
the law in fact if you open up these drives inside what you'll find is basically a hybrid design
one of them in fact uses a j Micron 10 gig USB while the other uses a real Tech 10 gig USB both
of them then also tack on an Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controller that's how you get your
high speed but it is essentially a thunderbolt 3 drive with USB functionality for backup if you
don't have access to a thunderbolt port or USB 4 port on the other hand this is I drive uses an as
media ASM 2464 PD controller that is a true USB 4 controller no space making this the only USB 4
Drive I've ever seen these drives in fact don't say USB no space for because that's actually a
trademark of the USB if and someone could stop them from calling him that they can call them
USB 4.0 drives all day because that is allowed but most experts that work in that area say
Gordon those drives are not usb4 unlike the zyke drive so what's the difference you're wondering
between this usb4 drive and this Thunderbolt 3 Drive well mostly performance a zeit drive
actually claims this will hit 3.8 gig reads and 3.1 gig rights in fact with the drive in it I did
just that I was able to hit 3.8 gig raids and 3.1 gig rights with the drive then I took the drive
and moved it into this Thunderbolt 3 USB 3 combo drive and it dropped to basically 3.1 gig reads
and about 2.9 gig rights that's about a 21 performance in reads for the USB 4 drive over
this Thunderbolt 3 enclosure so that's great Gordon I'll just buy Drive using the same as
media or the zark driving call it a day will hold up internet because usb4 isn't that clean cut yes
I was able to get 3.8 gig reads on this framework laptop with the 12th gen Alder Lake CPU over its
USBC ports no problem but when I took this older MSI laptop with its tiger Lake CPU plugged it into
his Thunderbolt 4 ports my performance dropped to 3.3 gigs a second instead of 3.8 gigs a second
even weirder when I took the zark drive and I plugged it into this Asus Rog Crosshair x670e Gene
motherboard with its USB 4 ports the performance dropped to 3.1 gig reads and 2.7 gig writes so
what gives well I spent a few days pulling my hair out which is why I don't have any here
and it turns out after hair iron from Intel the original 11th gen tiger lake with its Thunderbolt
4 integrated was never really designed to transfer at higher data rates than 32 gigabits per second
and even though this Asus motherboard is built for ryzen Zen 4 ryzen 7000
it doesn't actually use uh an AMD USB 4 controller in fact it uses an Intel Maple Ridge Thunderbolt
4 controller which is also designed to transfer data at about 32 gigabits per second but on newer
systems like this framework laptop with its 12th gen CPU or 13th gen CPUs you will see the higher
speeds you will also see the higher speeds on AMD laptops that support usb4 in fact I tested
the zyke drive in an Asus Rog G14 laptop with the beta bios for usb4 and it hit 3.8 gig reads and
3.8 gig writes now hopefully one day if Asus or AMD decide to integrate usb4 in its motherboards
you will also see that higher speeds but there's generally two years of performance basically about
3.1 gigs the equivalent of basically Thunderbolt 3 or this newer tier of usb4 and other devices
so yeah I'm one of the biggest proponents of usb4 but even I will admit it's still pretty
messy you got to make sure that the drive you're buying is actually a USB 4 drive not this kind
of old Thunderbolt 3 with USB tacked onto it kind of stuff and then you got to make sure
your laptop or your motherboard will actually give you that sweet higher performance of usb4
but the good news is these USB 4 drives might actually be a little cheaper uh the zyke drive
from a very small company it's on Indiegogo so it's not like you're going to buy this on Amazon
right now the drive is selling for about 109 so for drives like this USB 4.0 drive we paid about
140 bucks and this baby is still on sale on Amazon for about a hundred and fifty dollars so actually
getting higher purple drive that's cheaper a good deal and if you don't trust small vendors
or Indiegogo you can probably just wait for other Drive vendors to integrate the same as media USB
4 controller and you can get that sweet true USB performance out of those drives too so when those
drives do come out we'll be sure to cover them here on PC world's Channel and also on pcworld.com
all right [Music]