[Seltox]

My brother just gave me a FireWire and USB PCI card today, so i'm doing some research on FireWire because i'm not very familiar with it at all.

Anyway, the reason i've posted this here is because I was reading about Windows compatibility, and all I can seem to find on it is that from SP2, XP limits FireWire to 100mb/s even though it can run at 400/800/3200 mb/s. It also seems you can download updates that can allow the 400mb/s and 800mb/s... Now, I want to know if it will run on XP without a SP, and why they would limit it like that - it seems to be much faster than USB (480mb/s versus 3200mb/s? Big difference), so why is USB so popular compared? Is it simply an issue that Microsoft gets more money from USB usage or whatever, so they're condoning that?

Edited by Seltox, 01 January 2008 - 02:02 AM.

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USB is theoretically faster than Firewire, in so far as the top speed transfer data rates go (400Mbps for Firewire versus 480Mbps for USB 2).

However it is true that Service Pack 2 limits the Firewire connection speeds for reasons for compatibility. A patch is available on Microsoft's site for Service Pack 2 which will probably be included as part of the forthcoming Service Pack 3 distribution later this year.

Windows Vista doesn't even support Firewire IEEE 1394b (it will in the next Service Pack), while XP does but capped at 100Mbps throughout for compatibility reasons. Windows has always made heavy weather of what is essentially an Apple sourced technology.

[Neil Jones]

USB is theoretically faster than Firewire, in so far as the top speed transfer data rates go (400Mbps for Firewire versus 480Mbps for USB 2).

However it is true that Service Pack 2 limits the Firewire connection speeds for reasons for compatibility. A patch is available on Microsoft's site for Service Pack 2 which will probably be included as part of the forthcoming Service Pack 3 distribution later this year.

Windows Vista doesn't even support Firewire IEEE 1394b (it will in the next Service Pack), while XP does but capped at 100Mbps throughout for compatibility reasons. Windows has always made heavy weather of what is essentially an Apple sourced technology.

[Seltox]

Although high-speed USB 2.0 runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, typical PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 35 MB/s, with 30 MB/s being more typical (the theoretical limit for a USB 2 high-speed bulk transfer is 53.125 MB/s). This is likely due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire automates the same tasks in the interface hardware. For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.[13]

FireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB.

That's a quote from the wikipedia article on FireWire, just wanna know what you guys think of it (because wikipedia can be biased sometimes )

So, it seems that FireWire 800 is much faster that USB2.0...

I was just reading up a little about the upcoming USB3.0 "USB 3.0 is targeted at ten times the current bandwidth, roughly 4.8 Gbit/s"..That's really fast
Think it'll actually have any practical applications though?

[PsychPosse]

Interesting subject.

Never underestimate the power of Google for some answers..

techtvvault

Don't be confused by the rated speeds you see emblazoned across USB 2.0 and FireWire product boxes. Despite USB 2.0's 80 Kbps speed advantage over FireWire, our testing showed that the additional overhead of USB 2.0 made it slower than FireWire

Read more on this article here: TechVault