The drives that we tested saw a dramatic boost in performance when switching from USB 2.0 on the Mac Pro to the RocketU’s USB 3.0. To check for speed, we tested the drives through the USB 2.0 ports on the Mac Pro for a baseline result, and then performed the same tests using the RocketU. We tried eight different USB 3.0 drives, ranging from portable and desktop hard drives to solid state drives (SSDs), and all of them mounted and were available for use on our Mac Pro. Other USB 3.0 cards we’ve looked at were made to operate with drives from specific companies, severely limiting what you could work with. The best thing about the card is that it functions with all sorts of external hard drive brands. After inserting the card into the Mac Pro, powering up the machine, and installing the drivers, the card was ready to go. We installed the RocketU into an empty PCI Express x16 slot, but you can also plug it into an x4 slot. To evaluate the card, we used a Mac Pro with a 2.66GHz quad core Xeon processor, 3GB of RAM, and an internal Hitachi hard drive with 640GB of storage capacity. The RocketU works with most USB 3.0 drives available and gives a speed boost to USB 2.0 drives. HighPoint gives your system USB 3.0 compatibility with the RocketU Quad USB 3.0 for Mac, a PCI Express card with four USB 3.0 ports. If you have a Mac Pro and want to take advantage of USB 3.0 speeds, don’t fret.
