USB 3.1 Gen 2 / 2 x 10 Gb/s: promise kept
Most other cards of the same type are only PCIe x1 and use only one USB chip for 4 ports. The PCIe x1 link limits the total bandwidth for all ports to 8 Gb/s, but it would take 40 Gb/s to fully utilise the bandwidth of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports.
This card features two asmedia 2142 chips, each natively equipped with two PCIe links and 4 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gb/s) ports; only two of which are wired to the back of the card (x2 chips = 4 ports).
Each chip is on its own 2 PCIe links. The card therefore requires a PCIe x4 slot. This architecture allows each chip to have 16 Gb/s on the PCIe side, distributed over its two used USB ports. So we have 32 Gb/s for the card on the PCIe side, and 2 x 2 x 10 = 40 Gb/s on the USB side, which is almost perfect.
Gore justifications aside, the card is plug and play, it works, very well.
