worth it to hold out for usb3.0?

I would've been pretty unhappy if I got a laptop right before usb2.0 came out. I know peripherals will be (or already are) shipping with usb3.0 compatibility soon, will this be standard in laptops in the near future?

 

I wouldnt worry with it. I dont think there are even too many desktop MOBOs that supports it yet, let alone laptop boards. It might start seeing the light of day with SATA3 maybe the end of 2010 (that is just an educated guess)

 

If you can wait for a year or more, then you will probably have a notebook w/ SATA/600 and USB 3.0. I personally wouldn't wait if I want/need a new laptop in the next few months.

 

It would be awhile before the hardware would support it even if the computer could run it. I would not worry about.

 

Although it might come out by the end of the year, you wont see general implementation in a long time.
So USB 2.0 is what will have for at least another year or more.

 

Thanks, guys. I didn't realize it will probably be that long. Will it be easy to upgrade a laptop to be usb3.0 compatible? What hardware would I have to replace?

 

The USB port, the BIOS most likely.

 

or stuff in an expresscard

 

You can probably get an Expresscard to do the job.

 

The only reason device that I have that would benefit from USB 3.0 is the external harddrive. But I plan on getting an eSATA interface so bump 3.0

 

I'll most probably get a USB 3.0 pc expresscard slot card to use USB 3.0 when it comes out.. my bet would be it will come out on laptops before 2011..

 

Just want to pop in the news from PCStats that USB3.0 expansion is coming in desktop market pretty soon. I think USB3.0 adoption will be sooner once people will force the manufacturers in our open market. Like OP, I am also in the market for a decent laptop, but I think I will wait another 6 months.

 

Intel said they won't support USB 3.0 natively in their chipsets next year so I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Even if computers start supporting usb 3.0 next year, it may be another year or two after that for it to become standard. By the time you really feel the need for it, it may be time to get a new PC altogether.

 

There was an Asus MoBo just released supporting USB 3.0 but that is one, until it becomes mainstream/a need it will take a LOOOONG time.

 

I think everyone forgot to mention that, are there even any external devices that would benefit from USB 3.0?

Hard drives aren't capping SATA 3.0gbps. I can't remember the spec of USB 3.0, but are hard drives fast enough to take advantage of this? Remember that the connection (USB 3.0) only gives you the potential to transfer data that fast.

EDIT:

I just looked up the spec. USB 3.0 can transfer data at ~600MB/sec. Nothing is this fast, not even SSD. Seagate just released a SATA 6.0gb (~760MB transfer speed) hard drive and the connection did nothing to improve its speed.

Its like having a car that can go 500mph, but the tires are rated for 300mph. Your tires would blow up before you reach such speeds.

 

I though USB 3.0 were due to be released next year and become mainstream, but I see it will take more than 2 years to become really the standard.

I can't imagine in the future transferring data using SATA 6.0Gbps over a USB 3.0 bus, a terabyte would seem like it is only one gigabyte, amazing.

 

As someone mentioned, Intel chipsets will not support USB 3.0 until 2011. This is straight from Intel. AMD has similar plans, but they will be closer to 2011 as well.

 

you know that usb 2.0 is only 20MB/s or maybe even 30MB/s max for external devices, so anything above that will benefit. from sticks to hard drives to external displays to what ever.

but as it will be sorta posponed by intel, don't wait for it. there will be a 30$ usb pci card soon for pcs, so i might wait for that instead of buying now an ordinary usb cards to expand on my usb ports, though..

 

The maximum theoretical speed of USB 2.0 is 480mb/s, which is ~60MB/s. External devices capped at 20 or 30MB/s like you said is not the fault of the interface, but the actual storage device.

Increasing the speed of the interface (USB 3.0) will do nothing for us if our storage devices aren't even fast enough to utilize it.

For example Seagates new 2TB has a SATA 6.0gb interface, which is even faster than USB 3.0, but it had almost no performance gain.

Theoretical speed != Actual throughput

We need to advance our SSD tech in order to see the real benefits of USB 3.0 or even SATA 6.0gb

 

Wrong MrX, you cannot get 60MB/s over USB 2.0 even using the fastest SATA hard drive because of the interface, you get up to 30MB/s and it has nothing to do with the drive being a monstrous 7,200rpm 250GB/platter design.

I think USB 3.0 is a big step up in performance, and we know we would not achieve maximum theoretical transfer speed, is leap and bounds ahead of what USB 2.0 offers, period.

 

Agreed, My external hard drive has a max transfer speed of 20-30MB/s with USB 2.0..even if ASUS takes out a motherboard with USB 3.0 ports , there are few or no devices which use it.. we just have to wait...

 

You're right in that the interface is the problem, but even if we get the maximum theoretical speed of USB 3.0, we still don't have devices that fast. Also who knows how close or how far real world speeds would be once 3.0 is out.

 

Yep, but at least we would triplicate the current lame 20-30MB/s on external hard drives, most laptop users want portability with USB powered Hard drives, and not use more faster interfaces such as e-SATA.
I hope that when USB 3.0 we would have 150-200MB/s data transfer rate on 1TB notebook drives.

Myself I've been saying that I will upgrade until USB 3.0 is out, but other reasons right now (such as the impending dissapearance of the 16:10 aspect ratio) makes me buy another laptop maybe next year that does not feature 16:9.

 

Will there even be USB 3.0 express cards?

USB 3.0 is theoretically faster than PCI Express, so would it downgrade?

 

PCIe 1.0 x16 = 4GB/s (each lane is 250MB/s), USB 3.0 is not faster than that (400MB/s after overhead).

 

actually, it's a limit of the usb protocoll, too. as the protocoll defines that the system has to interrrupt for all tiny bits of data, you can't go further than 20-30MB/s, even while it could transfer 480Mbits/s. problem is, those 480MBits are mostly for communication overhead, as it can't transport bulk data packages. so 30MB/s is about the max you get for data transfers. if you want to suprass that (which is possible) you have to replace the usb driver and the controller on the external hdd. that way, you leave the usb communication spec, and can go up to 60MB/s. there was one vendor for external hdds who has written a special usb2.0 driver for bulk file transfers. when plugged in an ordinary pc, you had around 30MB/s. when you installed the special driver, you could get up to 60MB/s.

and usb3.0 now allows those bulk transfers by default (like the DMA modes for hdds, compared to PIO modes.. (ever ran a system with it. 30minutes to boot to logon and such ) so you can reach the theoretical bandwidth with devices by default quite good.



and still, the end fazit stays the same. external usb 2.0 hdds perform at around 30MB/s, that's what the usb 2.0 spec allows. external usb 3.0 will, from the start, be at around 120MB/s, or 4x faster. the usb 3.0 spec allows much more, but it's still a great boost right from the start.

 

you can get them now. there are some listed in some online stores.

 

Aren't most current HDDs limited to around 100MB/s read/write?

Anyway, here are two new articles that makes USB 3.0 seem pretty hopeful. The USB stick is set up in raid and can read at 200-300 MB/s, insane.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16634

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16714

 

well, 120MB/s might be a tad optimistic, but i thought hdds reached that speed by now, but might be wrong. still faster than before, and, espencially for hdds where you regularly might want to copy big data, any factor 2 or 3 in speed gain is great

but yeah, usb 3.0 will be most fun for flash based stuff, as you've shown with the usb stick linked in from dailytech (btw, the stick is just an ssd in stick form )

 

Well, a top performing 1TB 7200RPM drive gets around 100 MB/s in a syn benchmark. So in real world it may be slower.

The only drives that can reach those speeds or surpass it are SSDs or maybe the VelociraptorX

 

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,10176.html

More delays... it doesn't matter if you see something that can take advantage of USB 3.0, unless it reaches mainstream production.

 

100 MB/s is probably the fastest you'll see for a non Rapter, non RAID drive. I get about 70-80 with the 1TB Western Digitals on file transfers.

 

More words of the USB3.0
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/11/04/nvidia.blames.intel.for.delaying.usb.3/

 

No more words!!!!

We want chipsets!!!!

 

Did you even read it?

 

Of course. Hence the comment.

 

Looks like Intel may be sabotaging USB 3.0 in favor of lightpeak a little...

 

Anything is better than USB 2.0 atm.

 

I sense an opportunity for AMD.

I also sense that they're not taking advantage of it

 

AMD does not make a significant amount of chipsets. They'd have to seriously expand their capacity, if I'm correct.

 

Don't they (or their ATI subsidiary) make the chipsets for most AMD-based laptops?

 

IMHO no.
I havn't read through the 5 pages of posts as I dont currently have the time nor patience to.
USB 3.0 will be in desktops most likely next year. It won't make its way to laptops for probably another 6-9 months.
I remember reading somewhere that you could possibly get a expresscard usb 3.0 card

 

To sum up, USB 3.0 wont be in laptops until late 2010 at the earliest and possibly not until early 2011

And it will appear first in bigger/more powerful laptops first.

So if you want to transfer files faster than lame 25-30MB/s of USB 2.0 you should get a notebook that has an eSATA port (quite a few are available with a combo USB/eSATA port) and an external HDD that has an eSATA interface. eSATA is 300MB/s, problem solved

Personally I think USB 3.0 is not that big a deal. Transfer speeds higher than USB 2.0 will benefit large data transfer like External HDD, getting video off a camcorder? and other similar tasks. We already have eSATA for external hard drives which is faster than current SSDs even and perhaps the spec can be upgraded to comply with SATA 3.0? to allow 600MB/s eventually.

By the time USB 3.0 starts deploying, lightpeak will be following right behind and is better than USB 3.0 in most aspects (they are meant to be working on a power delivery solution). So I don't see the point of adopting USB3.0, esp. as a tech geek when we have eSATA already (I realize eSATA is essentially a one feature interconnect for External HDDs but that usage scenario seems to be the main reason people want USB 3.0, because USB 2.0 is a bottleneck on hard drives)

 

which is why i don't use external storage at all anymore, only wireless N or gigabit network to the home server, and internal storage. solves all sort of extra hazzle anyways. each of my system just has a C:\, and no usb storage system is ever needed in any form. live's great

 

I'm still stuck on Wireless G here. It's not consistently fast enough to beat out USB 2.0. But the Gigabit ethernet is. So sad isn't it. I can backup to my file server faster than I can with a external drive..................

 

well, usb 2 is by now quite old, and not really ment for data transfers in primary.

but i like it that way, removing all the usb crap makes live actually much more comfortable. wireless and networked wins over all that "i have an external disk for that" solutions.

 

Well, about the USB 3.0, it will take a long before it comes to laptops, and even longer to be fully implemented and mainstreamed, so if buying a laptop, for the moment, this is a factor not to be taken into account.

 

Sad isn't it. :cry:

 

Sad indeed, but not surprising - about the only area that laptops get the latest cutting edge technology is power consumption.