Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!ccsf.homeunix.org!news1.wakwak.com!nf1.xephion.ne.jp!onion.ish.org!onodera-news!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!news.ticon.net!feed.news.sonic.net!typhoon.sonic.net!not-for-mail Subject: Re: USB2 faster than Firewire From: Barry Twycross Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.dcameras,fj.comp.dev.digital-camera,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.equipment.35mm Message-ID: <150620032330475587%barry@netbox.com> References: <4p4Ha.85950$hd6.2138@fed1read05> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Thoth/1.5.2 (Carbon/OS X) Lines: 39 Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 06:30:47 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.201.233.11 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sonic.net X-Trace: typhoon.sonic.net 1055745047 208.201.233.11 (Sun, 15 Jun 2003 23:30:47 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 23:30:47 PDT Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.comp.dev.digital-camera:196 In article <4p4Ha.85950$hd6.2138@fed1read05>, Michael Frazier wrote: > I thought Firewire was much slower than USB 2.0 ??? > > Can a balanced (read non-Macaholic) please enlighten us all on this? I don't know where the idea of "much" slower would come from. As pointed out the raw bit rates of the connection are 400Mb/s for FireWire (1394a) and 480Mb/s for USB2, "much" doesn't seem to come into that. Also the latest version of FireWire (1394b) adds 800Mb/s and 1.6Gb/s, but only the 800 version has been implimented yet. Raw bit rates don't tell the whole story. FireWire people I know reckon that about 35MB/s is what you'll get out of the fastest FireWire devices. For USB, the transfer rates are limited by the host controller implimentation. The current crop of controllers max out in the 20-24MB/s range. Currently FireWire is most probably the faster technology. The next generation of USB host controller is promising to up the transfer rates into the 35-40MB/s range. I've seen one manage 31MB/s, which was limited by the hard drive it was attached to. That controller should be able to manage 39MB/s with a faster device. I don't know how fast a FireWire 800 device would be able to manage in reality, presumably a little faster than the current version. In Future FireWire will probably continue to be the faster technology. All of these transfer rates are so much faster than the cf device in the original question, its hardly worth worrying about. -- Barry Barry@netbox.com ------ (I should put something down here).