So, with USB3 coming devices coming out soon, I'd like to add support for it to my computer, preferably without needing a new motherboard - ASUS (and presumably others as well) is releasing a PCIe expansion card with USB3 (and SATA6) slots, so I'll probably pick one up, though I had a few questions regarding PCIe slots first

- ASUS' card, at least, is supposed to be for PCIe x4 slots - would it work in PCIe x16 slots as well?

- With my motherboard, if I have something in both PCIe x16 slots, they'll both actually only run at x8 - could this end up being a bottleneck for my 4870 (and future 5870 or 5970, depending on which I get), or would the extra bandwidth just be superfluous?

1. Yes, it should work. Whether it actually does or not is another question. I thought USB3 had been pushed back and the first devices will be in 2011? I know Intel isn't putting it in their chipsets until 2011, and no vendor will pick it up until they have it.

2. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/

I doubt it would make any difference to your 4870 in any case. As you can see from my link, you would get 99% of the performance using PCIe 2.0 x8 for a 5870. However, if that's v1.0 x8 then that's just like v2.0 x4 and would be 95% of the performance for a single 5870. So you wouldn't see an impact if it's PCIe 2.0, but you would for 1.0.

Unless I'm mistaken, AMD's 890GX and FX chipsets will have USB3 and SATA6, in the first half of next year.

SATA6 for sure, but I've seen nowhere official about USB3. AMD has such a small marketshare that even if they do have USB3, it's still not worth releasing USB3 devices. Whereas it would be for Intel.

Sorry for being ignorant...but what are the benefits of USB3 and what devices will work on it?

USB3 is 10x faster than USB2. So, where as USB2 devices were limited to up to 50-60 MB/s or so transfer speeds, USB3 will be up to about 500-600 MB/s.

And I also think that USB3 slots will be able to provide devices with more power, though I'm not 100% sure about that.

Why do you care about USB3.0 support at all ?

Imho you shouldn't worry before you actually have some piece of hardware that would use it.

Is there really any use for that though? I thought there was some super awesome peripheral that only worked with USB3 coming out. :(

Meh, I like to get newer things like that as soon as they're available, I'm just like that.