USB 3.0
To keep up with the increased popularity of streaming media and large file sharing, a newer faster USB standard has been created. Unveiled in 2007 with specs released in 2008, now in 2009 the Asus company has released a motherboard with support for the format. The Asus Xtreme Design P7P55D-E Premium, but more on that later. I want to keep the focus on the USB 3.0 standard.
So what does this new standard offer over USB 2.0?
- Transfer rates of up to 4.8 Gbps, which is said to be 10 times faster than USB 2.0 transfer rates.
- Better power management
- Support for Full-Duplex data transfers.
- New connector cables to support the higher transfer rates.
- Backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices.
- USB 3.0 cables have eight wires, four more than a USB 2.0 cable. These extra wires increase the bandwidth capabilities of the cable. Now there are dedicated transfer and receive lines, they are not shared across the same line as in the previous model.
Some examples of the speed increase are of course given in file sizes.
- A 3 MB song would transfer in hundredths of a second.
- A 20 GB high definition movie could transfer in less than a minute.
The speculators expect USB 3.0 supported devices to start trickling out the end of this year and throughout next year.
7cd0a069-e0e6-4662-9116-5793bb351d1f|0|.0