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128 Comments
- swordedge, on 01/07/2009, -3/+67It will never reach potential speeds... USB has way too much overhead. I have a drive that is both USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. It is much faster on the "slower" Firewire than it is on USB. Overhead is the reason. USB requires lots of CPU help, Firewire doesn't even need a computer.
- MarkusX, on 01/07/2009, -5/+47It was too good to be true.
- rozzlapeed, on 01/07/2009, -0/+41I believe USB 2.0 claims a max rate of 480 Mb/s, not Gb/s.
- n0c0ntr0l, on 01/07/2009, -4/+44You shouldn't be surprised. Really. It's USB and so it will never reach its potential speeds. Compare it to firewire which reaches the speeds its supposed to.
- Topher06, on 01/07/2009, -4/+39What's it supposed to be used for?
Ethernet is far more robust for network communications, I will stick with enternet for networking for now.
Hard drives don't even reach 50% of USB's 3.0 theoretical speed, in fact they seldom top USB 2.0 max speed.
Still really don't see a market for external USB GPU's as even USB 3.0 is far less bandwidth then what is necessary for a good external GPU product.
So, whats the point? - ThantiK, on 01/07/2009, -1/+35The reason that USB is so popular, but firewire faster is the dedicated chip that firewire has and usb doesn't. A few bucks means the difference (as well as space required for implementation) between a profitable device and one that doesn't bring in nearly as much profit.
USB3 *could* have a dedicated chip if one so desired and could achieve much better speeds - that's why USB3 is great right now, the new spec requires motherboards to have a dedicated USB3 chip - you need one on both ends to be able to communicate at those super-high speeds but right now the dedicated chip design for consumer devices isn't finished. Most of the products available at CES implement a software stack which hinders performance. - palmer, on 01/07/2009, -3/+27Because of eSATA's idiotic failure to provide POWER.
- AlKo, on 01/07/2009, -3/+26Did anyone RTA?
As with all new tech specs, it takes a while from hardware to catch up... there aren't too many devices that can use the full bandwidth of USB 3.0 anyways. Buried for stating the obvious. - ShannonGB, on 01/07/2009, -3/+26what a disappointment. why can't we just use sata connectors?
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -5/+26That's it! I'm going back to the 3.5 inch floppies. I don't even know why they messed with such perfection in the first place.
- Chicken, on 01/07/2009, -2/+20USB connection also powers devices.
- andywu92, on 01/07/2009, -1/+19156.25 MB/s sounds good to me..I never get those speeds with the USB drives I'm currently using
- BlakeEM, on 01/07/2009, -0/+17SATA is plug and play, you can hot swap drives all you want. Why my Vista machine gives me that stupid remove drive icon in my task bar for all my SATA drives. I think the problem with SATA is that it doesn't send power like USB does. Many higher end motherboards already come with external SATA plugs on the back.
- Balanced, on 01/07/2009, -0/+17Or at least is a lot closer... Everything has some overhead, but I think FW is generally capable of about 90% of the rated speed sustained.
- lornefs, on 01/07/2009, -1/+18Future products, geez.
- MrCoke, on 01/07/2009, -4/+19ok your reading into this wrong, even sata does not make full use of the 3gb/s it provides.... in other news your usb 2.0 flash drive doesnt make use of 480mb/s either....
- YourScarGrandpa, on 01/07/2009, -1/+13That's what she said!
- mattharvey716, on 01/07/2009, -1/+13i have a 3.5 inch floppy
- EtherGnat, on 01/07/2009, -0/+12"So, whats the point?"
There are other benefits to USB 3.0 besides speed. It provides more power, eliminates polling, allows a "sleep mode" for USB devices, improves charging capability, etc..
That, and the enhanced speeds will allow for growth over the next 5-10 years. - robbiedo, on 01/07/2009, -3/+15Firewire?
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -0/+11"Spelling wrong" is done, "w r o n g". "Spelling incorrectly" may be what you had in mind. Using incorrect grammar, is what YOU'RE doing. Chill out.
- jdmulloy, on 01/07/2009, -0/+11Why USB is so popular, one word, Ubiquity.
You can pretty much guaranty that you can find a USB port on any PC made in the past decade, and that it will be compatible with your devices. USB is cheap crap compared with Firewire, but non-techincal people don't understand this or care about this. Plus firewire chips cost more since they don't make the CPU do the heavy lifting, plus all chipsets in the past ~7 include USB anyway.
Firewire has not and will not overtake USB for the same reasons the Zip disk never beat floppies. Ubiquity and Cost. The drives cost "extra" and the disks were more expensive. More importantly if I had a file on a floppy I could go to any other computer and there would be a reasonable chance that I could use it in that machine. You couldn't do that with a ZIP disk, most PC didn't have a ZIP drive.
USB it self didn't really come into frequent use for at least 3 years from when it started being included in PCs. I had a PC with two USB ports in 1998, I never used them, all my peripherals used the legacy ports. It would not have made sense for a product to be put out on the market that only supported 15% of the hardware in use.
It all comes down to the lowest common denominator, what does EVERYONE have. - venuspcs, on 01/07/2009, -2/+12Yea well your girlfriend told me she wanted "12 inches and it better hurt" so I boinked her 3 times and then punched her in the jaw.
- napk, on 01/07/2009, -0/+10Just like it's predecessor!
- robbh66, on 01/07/2009, -3/+12When the floppy drive was killed off, there were better things to replace it. Now tell me what's supposed to replace FW?
- palmer, on 01/07/2009, -4/+13And replaced by...?
Yeah, keep cheering for every step BACKWARD in computing, dolt. - thedrue, on 01/07/2009, -8/+17firewire wins again...
- Dalhectar, on 01/07/2009, -0/+9I'd rather watch T2, Predator 2, or the Empire Strikes Back over the original.
- FromCertain, on 01/08/2009, -3/+11Adam is right,
~ 1GB is actually 1024MB(GiB), but commercially people have 'accepted' 1000MB as 1'GB'. Soo, when you buy a Hard Drive you're actually only receiving 93.125%. That's 6.875% ((1 - 109 / 230) * 100) less than what you think you are being sold. It may also seem like not worth mentioning a loss of 24 MB on each GB but when working with higher storage devices it adds up. 320'GB' = 298 GB, and even worse 1'TB' = 931GB. Just a FYI for anyone interested on why you don't have what you were promised. When there's 2 ways to advertise things, the person selling knows the consumers like the bigger number. - blackdeath88012, on 01/07/2009, -0/+8how ever will i be able to cope with a speed of only 1.25 gigs/sec
- triplec110h, on 01/07/2009, -0/+81/4 of 625 megabytes per second is about 156 megabytes per second. That's about as fast as any single hard drive will read/write.
- KibibyteBrain, on 01/08/2009, -0/+7@GothAlice You can use Firewire for general purpose serial applications. You could make a Firewire mouse if you wanted. You could not make an eSATA mouse. Its because SATA is special purpose serial port, and does not have some of the things you need for general purpose serial communications, and likewise has requirements unsuitable for most general purpose applications.
USB 1 was made as a cheaper alternative to Firewire, and so low bandwidth devices use it., but that does not make firewire not a general purpose serial port, just like one wire, I2C, SPI, CAN Buses, etc. - shadowmoose, on 01/08/2009, -0/+7I just died a little inside.
- froman118, on 01/08/2009, -0/+7It faints and gossips behind her friends' backs quickly. Duh.
- sickb13, on 01/07/2009, -2/+91/4th of the maximum bandwidth? Isn't that the 2.0 speed.....
- GothAlice, on 01/07/2009, -0/+7You need a "dedicated chip" in existing USB2 devices: it's called a USB Controller. Devices like the iPhone have nifty "dedicated chips" that can act as both master and slave in the USB relationship. So it's not the failure to include a chip that is causing the problem. It's the fundamental design. Instead of hardware DMA (direct memory access) between USB2 client and host, there is this bogus handshaking & request/polling process in place. This requires requests to be heavily processed on the user's system and severely limits actual throughput (vs. theoretical less overhead). I'm not sure about USB3, but this explains the vast difference in speed between FireWire 400 and USB2. (Not touching FireWire 800.)
- palmer, on 01/07/2009, -3/+9Especially since we already have a far better standard in FireWire.
- NecroSexy, on 01/07/2009, -1/+7I NEED A CHART OMG.
- richlizard24, on 01/07/2009, -1/+7Money.
- inactive, on 01/08/2009, -0/+6USB has always got crap throughput compared to the theoretical max. Such is life.
- Dougman82, on 01/07/2009, -0/+6What does "dramatically fast" mean?
- robbh66, on 01/07/2009, -0/+6Iomega already did this with Jazz and Rev. It's expensive as ***** and not as reliable.
- kelchm, on 01/08/2009, -0/+5wow.
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wow. - GothAlice, on 01/08/2009, -0/+5Every time I transfer a file over 1GB in a few seconds, I hear this strange "Duh duuh DAAAAA!" sound coming from everywhere… scared the crap out of me the first few times, but I got used to it.
- Merigo, on 01/08/2009, -0/+5I just threw up a bit in my mouth.
- jasdf, on 01/07/2009, -0/+5Seagate now has hard drives with 500GB per 3.5" platter. How awesome would it be to have a single platter in a floppy disk like shell.
- joe90210, on 01/08/2009, -0/+5reading something this stupid is painful
- Morwynd, on 01/07/2009, -1/+6That's a pretty broad statement. I think wired connections will continue to have their uses for some time, like mass data transfer (ever tried transferring multi GB over wireless?). So I don't think I'll be interested in a wireless external hard drive anytime soon.
USB also provides power. Like my scanner, for example, gets all its power from USB. Why would I want a wireless connection to it, if I'm going to have to plug it into a wall for power anyway? Same reason I still use wired mice and keyboards, I don't want the hassle of having to charge them or change batteries. - rif42, on 01/08/2009, -0/+5@Adam420
Talking about flash mem, the chip inside is actually a 2GiB i.e. a real 2147483648 bytes. However due to erase block sizes and wear-leveling the controller chip needs some space for house keeping tables, that is why you get 5-7% less than you expect.
So the lost capacity of the flash mem looks like the same as hard disks, but it comes from a different technical reason. - KibibyteBrain, on 01/07/2009, -0/+5SATA is not meant to be used for general purpose serial applications either. USB and Firewire are for more than storage volumes...
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