Firewire or USB 2.0 faster????

[orbital517]

I have the Lacie external DVD writer and have a choice of using either USB 2.0 or Firewire. Which one is better and why?

[HideOut]

Use whatever is on your system. Tests have shown that USB 2.0 is faster for optical devices while Firewire is faster on hard drives. If you have one built onto your motherboard while the other is via a PCI card then use whichever is on board. They tend to perform better (Firewire OR 2.0) and use less CPU than any brand or chipset of PCI. Tomshardware.com has some nice reviews of this kinda thing.

HideOut

[MOVIEGEEK]

USB2.0 is faster on paper but in the real world firewire is faster and it uses less system resources.Here's some test results:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/jump/0,24331,3393574,00.html
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/
http://www.tampa-bay.net/BitsAndBytes/FireWire-vs-USB.htm
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,103769,pg,7,00.asp

[orbital517]

Thanks for the info moviegeek.

[Faustus]

Moviegeek is right, its all about Throughput, USB 2.0 can on paper burst transfer higher then Firewire, but in real world Firewire usually whips the pants off it. Plus Firewire 800 is out (but spreading slowly) and it makes firewire look slow.

[HideOut]

yes but you have to have 800 hardware. Often optical devices work slightly faster with 2.0 but hard drives are opposite. 2.0 is more widely avaiable due to firewire's slow growth. Depends on what you got though

[lmichiel]

Both standard are fast enough to do their work without any problems so the question which is better is totally beside the point.
OK, technically one of the two will be better at certain tasks but just remember that the one which is the lesser one for a task, will still do this task without any problems or difficulties.

cheers
Leo

[garryheather]

Stating the obvious here, the limiting factor regarding speed will probably be that of the writer in this application - if you want to burn DVD's the fastest I've seen to date is 4x for a DVD-R which is well within the maximum bandwidth of both IEEE-1394 and USB-2. Changing the connection method will not increase the write speed of the recorder unless it can't keep up, in which case it will take longer to burn assuming you've got under-run protection and it can handle the data reaching it in its own time and in spurts.

If you've got the choice of both, use whichever means less wear and tear on the connectors... if you've only got one USB-2 port but 2 devices and don't want to go down the hub route, use the firewire option.

[Hardcoreruss]

I have a 200gb external maxtor hard drive. Which has both USB2 and firewire and the firewire is SOOOOO much quicker.

[HideOut]

garyheather
Its not exactly that though. The same burner will burn faster in a 2.0 hookup, espcially if it is USB 2.0 on board and not via PCI card. The times arent much faster though, typically 5-10% faster over firewire. Hard drives on the other hand are faster via firewire and often as much as or more than 10% difference along with less CPU usage too.

Hide

[vitualis]

I find what you say rather interesting HideOut... Do you have a link that I could read on that?

There are reasons why FireWire should be faster for all sustained throughputs due to its isochronous nature.

Regards.

[garryheather]

I'm not sure I agree with HideOut - if the drive is rated at a certain speed and has both USB and IEEE-1394, then it should be able to write at that speed (media allowing, of course), no matter which interface you chose to use. Similarly for reading, of course - unless it categorically states otherwise on the box.

Thus saying, there is no speed increase in writing a disc by using one interface method over another because the speed of the drive is the limiting factor.

I don't see how a drive can be expected to write faster than it's optics and processing will allow just because you've opted for the USB-2 option instead of IEEE-1394. The only time you might notice a difference is if, for some reason (like port sharing), the rate is not sustainable and the drive's burn process is interrupted and the drive has to rely on it's under-run capabilities - in which case it will take longer to burn a disc than if it ran continuously.

I am not denying that there is a difference in sustainable bandwidth between the two, but I am doubtful a DVD recorder will operate any faster by using USB-2. A hard disc, yes, maybe you would notice a difference - but not a current DVD recorder.

What you're saying is like expecting your car to go faster than it's maximum speed by repeatedly stamping on the accelerator... it's just not going to happen !!

Don't forget the original post asked what was best for a DVD recorder - the thread seems to have gone a little off topic when the obvious answer is whatever ports you've got should work perfectly well, otherwise the drive is being falsely advertised. Bearing in mind how many USB devices are out there now, it is possible to "overload" the port and the subsequent bandwidth being shared between devices could put a strangle hold on the recorder. The same goes for IEEE-1394 too, of course. I think most people using these boards would agree the best thing to do is distribute such loading or, if possible, put the recorder on its own, unique port.

Either should be suffice for the recorder to operate satisfactorily if the device was originally built with both forms of connectivity.

[Faustus]

Exactly, how can a burner burn faster then full speed? Every external Firewire product I've used has ran awsome and as fast as they were designed to go.

What I've always found odd is people saying that onboard things are faster then a PCI card equalivant. Onboard anything, rather it be a sound card, USB, onboard SCSI, ect. ect still must reside on the PCI bus to my understanding, they are just built onto it. they still use the SAme system IRQs and IO addresses. So unless the system has a device bus I don't understand I cannot see how onboard can be faster then a PCI card.

A friend recently claimed the same thing (onboard being faster) but after I said basicly whats above he couldn't explain to me how it could be faster, if I'm wrong I would like to be educated as to why, cause it means I missed some major change in the way a system board is designed.

[HideOut]

Here is an example of hard drives that is both 2.0 and firewire in one case and it's benchmarks.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20030411/index.html

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20020827/index.html

I cant seem to find the DVD/CD comparison. Ive tried searching but I'm too tired to look any more. Many articles exhist. Part of why the PCI cards are slower is that not all systems have the USB 2.0 on board thru PCI (or firewire) and rather are integrated right into the northbridge/southbridge. Early versions were 3rd party chips soldered to the board and were as you say, the same or similar as a PCI card but newer versions are different and more efficient. Also, note that nVidia Nforce and Nforce2 has the hypertransport buss that connects the north and southbridges at much higher rates (over 1/2Gigabytes/second) rather than just 133MB/s with PCI. There are also high end boards with PCI-x or other flavors of PCI such as 64bit/66mhz that have massive bandwidth. There are more than just PCI cards these days. I have cards in mine as my board is older but my friend's nForce2 is must faster an easier on the CPU when doing the exact same burn. We have same CPU and burners and even same amount of RAM. Video cards are even nearly identical. His MOBO is just far superior. If ya dont wanna believe me ok, I dont care but these is proven fact from research from many places, not just my guessing. www.tomshardware.com, www.anandtech.com, hardop.com (spelling?), sharkyextreme.com and others so google.com it and look for yourself.

hideout

[Faustus]

I see what your saying. Basicly its because its a fuction of the way the chipset was designed. Interesting really....

So built on USB or firewire might be a little faster then a PCI card, I dont see how it could make a huge difference in performane on a burner though. It either burns its speeds or it doesn't.

Also in the first link you gave it seems they say firewire is the clear winner.

[vitualis]

Unless I'm mistaken, USB2.0/Firewire that is onboard the mobo ALL still connect via the Southbridge through the PCI bus...

The interconnect between Northbridge/Southbridge via hypertransport, etc., doesn't make a difference...

A superior mobo will make a big difference in total system performance, but it doesn't necessarily make any sense between onboard/off board USB2.0/Firewire. The analogy is wrong.

On the same mobo, whether you use the onboard OR an off-board Fireware/USB2.0 card, both must connect through the PCI bus.

To be sure, many off board Firewire/USB2.0 cards may well be CRAP and that could cause a difference in performance.

Regards.

[Faustus]

Thats what I always assumed also vitualis, but I was trying to have an open mind because he's the second person to suggest its not so recently. I agree thought that if its still connected to the PCI bus the only extra speed would be because of the trace distances being so short compaired to coming thorugh the actual slots... but that would not be a noticeable difference.

[jacknjt]

last thing usb2.0 gona win cause of it ease and popularity and is backward compatible with usb1.1. firewire is just another optional port. i love firewire too but i know it cant win against microsoft.

[HideOut]

and firewire 800 is basically backward compatible too and XP supports it (longhorn will Firewire 2 natively, drivers to be added for XP, 2k) Its got its advantages and disadvantages.

Hide

[vitualis]

USB2.0 will never "win" in a sense as USB and Firewire are used for different things. They will undoubtedly co-exist. USB is great for peripherals generally, but as long as we have DV cameras, we will have Firewire...

Not to mention that Firewire is faster for things like external HDDs...

Regards.

[Metaluna]

I have a combo USB2.0/Firewire external chassis with a Yamaha 44x CD writer in it (Oxford 911 chip for the Firewire side). My PC has a variety of USB and Firewire ports and a while back I ran some benchmarks using Nero CD Speed (this mostly tests read speed, access times, and CPU usage, not write speed). I don't have the exact results handy but, if I remember correctly:

The best results came from using the 1394 interface on my Adaptec DuoConnect PCI card (this is a combo USB 2.0/Firewire card using a Texas Instruments LV26 chipset for the Firewire, and a NEC 702100 chip for the USB, both sitting behind a HiNT PCI bridge).

All other interfaces I tried were about in the same league, i.e. just a hair slower than the Adaptec/1394 connection, with maybe 1-2% higher CPU utilization. These included:

USB 2.0 via the Adaptec card
USB 2.0 built in to the Intel 845PE chipset/ICH4 Southbridge
1394 via my Creative Audigy 2 soundcard

So basically, it was pretty much a wash. You would never see the small differences in anything but a synthetic benchmark.

I have noticed that the USB interface is more finicky on my WinXP system though. For example the built-in USB 2.0 on my motherboard has 6 ports, but two of them don't properly recognize the drive for some reason. For that reason I mainly use the Firewire connection.