What is Digg?195 Comments
- dagamer34, on 08/01/2008, -6/+147Firewire devices can be daisy-chained with no cost in CPU cycles, whereas USB 3.0 still cannot. It's as simple as that.
And really, these two specifications aren't even competing with each other. Firewire is heavily used in most AV equipment like sound cards/boards, camcorders, etc... as well as hard drives. - swordedge, on 08/01/2008, -7/+84I do not believe that USB 3.0 stands a chance of being faster then this new firewire spec. As in 480 vs 400, Firewire will outrun USB. WAY WAY less overhead.
- sliksta, on 08/01/2008, -13/+85USB dominated Firewire primarily because of apple's initially outrageous royalties attached to Firewire. This despite the fact that it is an IEEE standard (IEEE 1394). IEEE allows this but it is still pathetic of apple.
And actually yes there is competition between the two. Firewire is a better standard tech-wise, but apples greed was the standards downfall. - huskerdude, on 08/01/2008, -0/+43Firewire still has a life for it in the high-end pro audio and video markets. I work in digital audio, and when you're sending 24 streams of high-bit audio to an external drive, USB's overhead and slower sustained speed will make even a pretty powerful system cry.
- LANjackal, on 08/01/2008, -1/+41"That's not to say they don't exist, but FireWire 400 is easier to find than FireWire 800 (except on Macs), and the number of available ports is typically limited to 1-2, even on a high-end motherboard. USB 2.0 ports, on the other hand, are plentiful, with most boards offering 8-12 in some combination of included ports and onboard headers."
That's a bit of a silly argument. Firewire devices are designed to be daisychained, which is why each ships with 2 ports. - leerayIG88, on 08/01/2008, -2/+37I think we should forget about USB 3.0 and Firewire. We need to upgrade 3 1/2 floppy drive access time and it's memory!
- vwgtiturbo, on 08/01/2008, -0/+29Sorry, but is this just like how USB2 is 'faster' than Firewire today? Theoretically, USB is faster, BUT real-world shows that Firewire kicks USB ass!
- Dalhectar, on 08/01/2008, -12/+41What we need is wider acceptance of eSATA, not this. Esprically for hard drives. We already have 3.0Gbops connections to our motherboard in eSATA.
- HappyScrappy, on 08/01/2008, -0/+28eSATA is iffy in my experience. Even at 6 feet I already have to turn off 3.0GBps (and go to 1.5GBps) to get it to work.
I love the concept, but it isn't working well.
Firewire also supplies sufficient power, you can actually plug your hard drive into your computer and not need a power supply and have it work reliably. Unlike eSATA or USB. - digggggggggg, on 08/01/2008, -1/+28USB's max throughput estimate is too generous, while firewire's is generally accurate.
In many tests with the same Lacie HD through both fw and usb2, the firewire was almost always 2-3 times faster writing to the disk, despite what you read on paper. - inactive, on 08/01/2008, -2/+28Oh... btw... Firewire 3200 will have the identical ports as FW800.... no cable changes for the new standard.
- kiensoy, on 08/01/2008, -1/+27I was hoping USB 3.0 connectors could be plugged regardless of the side. I hate trying to plug a USB only to find out I was trying to plug it the other way around.
- Koookie, on 08/01/2008, -1/+27But USB 3.0 has a bigger number than S3200~!
It's supposed to be a technical article, and with that title they should have some more detailed comparisons -- maybe they should just have used another title. They don't provide any details about latency, bandwidth, burst speeds vs. stable speeds, overhead (which you mentioned), and so on. By the least they should have mentioned that USB 3.0 gives "roughly 4.8 Gbit/s." (S: Wikipedia)
"Faster" is a bit more complicated than just the provided number -- in USB it's just the maximum burst bandwidth, no? - inactive, on 08/01/2008, -4/+29Firewire is far superior to USB in almost every area. CPU usage, daisy-chaining devices, and overall speed and efficiency make it my favorite external interface.
- Spuy767, on 08/01/2008, -3/+25Firewire actually meets it's bandwidth claims, I've never seen USB 2.0 come close. And I've done side by side tests with the same device, a WD MYBook Pro with 2 500 Giggers in a RAID 0.
- fejorca, on 08/01/2008, -1/+23I alway prefer firewire over usb, I feel firewire more stable when connection more than 6 devices to one port.
- tnoy, on 08/01/2008, -1/+23$1 per port. An external hard drive would typically be $2 in fees.
There wasn't much demand for Firewire in 2000. Companies like Dell and Compaq (The two largest at the time) each shipped around 4M units. Instantly cut $4M from costs just by making a Firewire card an optional extra--that they'll then sell with a larger markup is a smart move. Someone got a raise deciding to do that.
Thats just licensing fees, too. The firewire chipsets at the time were fairly inexpensive, too. Only around $10-$15. Though, thats another saving of $40-48M. Meanwhile, Intel was adding USB to the chipset, so virtually everything that would use an Intel chipset would also have USB.
When you're dealing with shipments in the millions, $1 adds up quickly. - inactive, on 08/01/2008, -6/+26Actually... go read your history on USB.... USB WAS saved by Apple. And Intel is officially on the record saying just that. Intel was just about to scrub USB when the original iMac came out.
Pre-original iMac, USB had been pushed by Intel and was on a few PC models... but developers of peripherals just weren't biting. When Apple decided to release the very first iMac with USB ports, they struck deals with several peripheral manufacturers to release printers and other items. - prisoner24601, on 08/01/2008, -3/+23Same as how the HDMI consortium's greedy royalty demands pushed Dell into dreaming up DisplayPort. HDMI could have easily (from a technical standpoint) put VGA/DVI to rest a couple years ago, but because the business model was so absurd, we're getting yet ANOTHER cable type.
Apple showed exactly how to take an awesome technology and make sure it would never become a universal dominating standard for data. The HDMI consortium has done the exact same thing for AV. Nice work guys.
These people simply cannot grasp that just because you have a cool technology doesn't mean no one else can come up with something that does the same thing. Don't get greedy in your royalty demands. You won't win anything, but consumers will lose. - Balk2K, on 08/02/2008, -1/+20That's right, Firewire is actually reliable and reaches about 97% of the advertised speed. USB continually drops out and is unsuitable in its current form for things like video and sound mixer applications.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/12/18/ba ... - echos, on 08/01/2008, -0/+19"the number of available ports is typically limited to 1-2, even on a high-end motherboard. USB 2.0 ports, on the other hand, are plentiful, with most boards offering 8-12" Joel Hruska your a tool. There is a clear difference in how the ports are used, the reason why there are not 12 FireWire ports on a machine is because the port is designed around daisy-chaining devices unlike USB which requires a hub to attach multiple devices to a single port.
The reason FireWire is more efficient is due to the way the standard is setup where each device must supply its own "networking" hardware as opposed to USB where all data is run by the CPU which in terms is more costly in performance. The other reason USB is more prominent is besides licensing cost the hardware for the device isn't as much as FireWire because with USB dedicated "networking" hardware is not required. Plus to add on to the list FireWire was born as a pure multimedia interface since day one to support things like Pro Cameras, Pro Audio, Networking, and Storage. While USB was setup as a standard to support devices like mice and keyboards. - IanPR, on 08/01/2008, -3/+21Anyone have a 3.2Gbps HDD?
...UNDER 3000 dollars? - inactive, on 08/01/2008, -3/+21I could drive a Yugo as well... but I don't want to.
Firewire > USB - monkeyrun, on 08/01/2008, -19/+36You probably won't remember it, but USB didn't die a sad lonely death mainly because Apple made it standard on all Mac.
- merreborn, on 08/01/2008, -0/+16You laugh, but I once used winzip to span the data from the X-com 2 CD over 20 720kb floppies.
That's one afternoon I'll never get back. - inactive, on 08/01/2008, -2/+18There only has to be 1-2 Firewire ports on a machine... you can daisy-chain up to 127 devices PER PORT. No more stupid USB hubs. No more CPU cycles being eaten up by the lousy implementation of USB. As far as "easy to implement"... there is nothing different in implementing Firewire than USB... except you can operate without all the lame hubs and scattered cables.
- KMartSheriff, on 08/01/2008, -0/+16And perhaps capacity. 1.44 MB is becoming a little difficult to work with.
- inactive, on 08/01/2008, -1/+17You're right.. not because it 'feels more Pro'... because it actually is. The technical aspects of Firewire far outweigh the consumer USB standard. There isn't a studio in their right mind that would run external drives off of USB.
- HappyScrappy, on 08/01/2008, -2/+17I think it's more because the Firewire standard was too advanced and thus too expensive to implement for its time. You could make a USB keyboard or mouse at a reasonable price but not a Firewire one.
So USB took off quickly and Firewire didn't. And once USB 2.0 took off, most people no longer saw the need to have a Firewire port anymore.
I can get a $200 DV Firewire video digitizer and then take that huge stream and transcode it. Or I can buy a $60 USB 2.0 video digitizer that generates MPEG-4 directly. That's what's killing Firewire, not licensing fees. - smashingmonkey, on 08/02/2008, -1/+16Exactly, and USB2.0 is faster than Firewire 400... on paper. Real world is a very different story.
- fejorca, on 08/01/2008, -1/+153 lacie external hardrives, 2 JVC HDV VCRs, 1 iPod (2nd gen) and 2 external dvd burners. Normally I have 4 or 5 firewire devices using it at the same time (most of the time the external hdds) when copy a on-the-fly dvd and everything worked fine.
- inactive, on 08/01/2008, -2/+15Have you ever looked at actual USB vs Firewire benchmarks? Go Google it... the original 400Mbps Firewire spanks the 480Mbps USB 2.0... wait?.. what?.. how can that be!? The paper says 480Mbps!!! Numbers on paper are theoretical not actual. Just like you'll never see true 400Mbps on Firewire400, you certainly won't see 480Mbps on USB 2.0. USB requires so much overhead and handshaking that it is highly inefficient.
- manitoba98xp, on 08/01/2008, -1/+13If by "on paper", you mean comparing the speed numbers, then yes. But for numerous technical reasons (which are discussed elsewhere in these comments, among other places), 3.2 Gbps Firewire may well outperform USB 3.0.
- Swift2, on 08/01/2008, -4/+16USB 2.0 dominated because it was Intel's. Is anybody stupid here? It's not as fast and it gobbles up CPU. USB 1.1 made sense. USB 2.0 is a pile o' crap, and the only thing that it has that is "faster" are the theoretical specs. In the real world, Firewire 400 trounces USB 2.0, and 800 smashes it to the ground. If it was a just world--
"Big royalty"? How about $1.00 a connector? Intel gave its crap away, because it hooked people into Intel even more. - Swift2, on 08/01/2008, -0/+12Apart from the lower numbers in the market making the device more costly, it's a negligible added cost. On a Firewire 800 hard drive I have, it gives me 45 Mb/s transfers, reliably. The reason why an external drive with Firewire 800 costs more that the usual crap USB 2.0 is because you get the cheapest model with USB 2.0 only, and then the fancy drives with Quad interfaces: USB 2.0, firewire 400 and 800, and eSata. Of course Quad is more expansive. But if they offered JUST a Firewire 800 interface, the price difference would be negligible.
- s0ny, on 08/01/2008, -0/+11They did, from the description..."The new version defines transfer speeds of 1.6Gbps and 3.2Gbps, is backwards compatible with FireWire 800 and 400, and uses the same cable standard as FireWire 800."
I know sometimes its too much effort to go and read the whole article before commenting, but not even reading the description and posting crap is just lazy. - StephenCIreland, on 08/01/2008, -4/+15usb 3.0 is using fibre optics and ***** isnt it ? i can hardly see those cables being cheap, also firewire wins with anything concernign video cameras. also i dont see the ability to daisy chain computers using normal usb cables to create a network
- fejorca, on 08/01/2008, -0/+11I agree, FW feels more "Pro", you what I mean...
- hutchy, on 08/01/2008, -0/+11rtfa
The new firewire spec IS backwards compatible - raptordrew, on 08/01/2008, -0/+11Pssh.... you obviously don't use the "split" feature in WinRAR. Need that 1 GB file moved? Sure. I can do it ;-P
- TallestSkil, on 08/01/2008, -2/+13Yes. ON PAPER. Just like USB 2.0 beats FireWire 400 ON PAPER. USB currently only has BURSTS up to 480mb/s, whereas FireWire is SUSTAINED at 400mb/s, thus making it faster overall.
- gaqua, on 08/01/2008, -1/+12Why does the firewire logo look like the Flux Capacitor?
- porl, on 08/02/2008, -0/+11one major thing that usb lacks that firewire has is the timing synchronisation between devices. i can plug two firewire audio interfaces in and know that they have sample-accurate synchronisation between each other with no extra cabling or setup. usb devices (if they existed) like this would need something like wordclock or adat synchronisation to avoid clock skew.
- inactive, on 08/01/2008, -0/+11Anything you would like high throughput or would care to daisy-chain together.... with extremely low CPU usage.
- colincornaby, on 08/01/2008, -1/+11Firewire is a much better connector for hard drives, and most mid range hard drives all have Firewire connectors. All high end stuff will have Firewire, and any sort of external RAID box will most definitely have FW800 because USB 2.0 isn't fast enough to actually take advantage of a RAID's speed.
- johnpaul191, on 08/01/2008, -1/+11I guess they were still in awe of Sony's business practices?
- planetmac, on 08/01/2008, -3/+13All my firewire devices outperform my usb2 devices. Nuff said.
- prisoner24601, on 08/01/2008, -0/+10Doesn't sound like much right? But think about it with HDMI/DisplayPort if you are Michael Dell:
"Humm, I'm gonna sell 5 million computers this year, and probably almost as many monitors. I can either write a check to the HDMI consortium for TEN MILLION DOLLARS this year and EVERY YEAR for the foreseeable future because these guys happen to have refined the DVI connector everyone already uses and called it HDMI. Or, on the other hand, I can have a small team of my engineers do our own set of refinements (which will cost me maybe like $100k ONE TIME) and call it Display Port."
I'm thinking Dell probably wants to put the $9.9 million dollar difference into the pockets of his shareholders. And I'm also thinking he didn't end up running the world's largest computer company by saying: "Ah who cares about a buck here or a buck there on each unit? How much money could that really add up to anyway?"
HDMI was greedy and stupid and no matter how much they may tell themselves that $1 a unit (or whatever it was that they picked) was reasonable, they are wrong and the fact that they pushed the Dell/HP's of the world to make DisplayPort proves it. Apple did the same with firewire. - DarkShroud, on 08/02/2008, -0/+10That's just to let people know how awesome it is at a glance.
- fugazied, on 08/01/2008, -2/+12All of my external drive enclosures are firewire (lacie enclosures). Fast backups. But my ipod touch is USB 2, slow and annoying. My digital camera is USB as well, it is annoying to be putting up with slow speeds while I have a macbook pro with FW ready.
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