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From wikipedia (don't ya love it?):
USB compared with FireWire
USB was originally seen as a complement to FireWire (IEEE 1394), which was designed as a high-speed serial bus which could efficiently interconnect peripherals such as hard disks, audio interfaces, and video equipment. USB originally operated at a far lower data rate and used much simpler hardware, and was suitable for small peripherals such as keyboards and mice.
The most significant technical differences between FireWire and USB include the following:
USB networks use a tiered-star topology, while FireWire networks use a repeater-based topology.
USB uses a "speak-when-spoken-to" protocol; peripherals cannot communicate with the host unless the host specifically requests communication. A FireWire device can communicate with any other node at any time, subject to network conditions.
A USB network relies on a single host at the top of the tree to control the network. In a FireWire network, any capable node can control the network.
These and other differences reflect the differing design goals of the two buses: USB was designed for simplicity and low cost, while FireWire was designed for high performance, particularly in time-sensitive applications such as audio and video. Although similar in theoretical maximum transfer rate, in real-world use, especially for high-bandwidth use such as external hard-drives, FireWire 400 generally has a significantly higher throughput than USB 2.0 Hi-Speed.[10][11][12][13] The newer FireWire 800 standard is twice as fast as FireWire 400 and outperforms USB 2.0 Hi-Speed both theoretically and practically.[14]
| quote: | Originally posted by No Left Turn
Don't USB and Firewire each have their pros and cons, making them better than the other under their ideal conditions? (This debate doesn't bother me at all as I prefer neither over the other.) Even though USB 2.0 has faster clock speeds, isn't Firewire supposed to transfer larger files faster, with USB 2.0 being more proficient with transferring lots of smaller files? This has always been my understanding, though, I've never put this to the test myself as the work I do wouldn't really benefit THAT much from confirming this.
I like Firewire interfaces better, anyway, since they seem to be more stable and, if applicable, have the ability to be daisy-chained (go go MOTU!!) to other like devices. But for hard drives and such, I don't really see the big deal. |
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