Firewire vs. USB 2.0 on XP question,PLEASE

[Alon Brodski]

Hello world!

I have read in some russian online magazine an article from the year 2000
about how Firewire and USB 2.0 would perform on Win98SE/2000 computers.They
did few checks (they actually installed external HD's ,using FireWire and
then USB 2.0 controller cards).And after tests they came to conclusion that
even though theoretically USB 2.0 can achieve a greater transfer speeds,but
in a REAL LIFE FireWire was much faster.

So I have few questions here to ask:
1)Is it true and why?
2)From what I knew on Win98 computers one could only use USB 1.0/1.1 ver. or
you can also use USB 2.0?
3) And most important-What about XP? same story? any difference?
4)Are there brand name motherboards with built-in Firewire controller?
5)While in the States,I heard something about FireWire 2.0 standart....? Is
it implemented yet?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Pavel A.]

Hello world!

I have read in some russian online magazine an article from the year 2000
about how Firewire and USB 2.0 would perform on Win98SE/2000 computers.They
did few checks (they actually installed external HD's ,using FireWire and
then USB 2.0 controller cards).And after tests they came to conclusion that
even though theoretically USB 2.0 can achieve a greater transfer speeds,but
in a REAL LIFE FireWire was much faster.

So I have few questions here to ask:
1)Is it true and why?

This is true because USB needs a lot of CPU instuctions in order to put a data
packet on a wire.
In contrast to this, Firewire works via direct memory access, much like
bus-mastering PCI.
The higher is CPU load, the bigger is the advantage of bus mastering.

2)From what I knew on Win98 computers one could only use USB 1.0/1.1 ver. or
you can also use USB 2.0?

You live in a civilized counry... isn't it a time to get a decent XP machine?
Microsoft does not seem to support USB2 on win9x. There are USB2 drivers from
manufacturers of USB adapters (Orange, etc) but my experiencce with these is too
little.

3) And most important-What about XP? same story? any difference?

This is a hard question. Formally, XP supports Firewire quite well and there is a
lot of 1394 hardware with XP drivers. However there are rumors that Microsoft's
in-box XP drivers for some device classes - especially, disks - are buggy and can
cause loss of data. Haven't heard whether this is fixed in SP2.

4)Are there brand name motherboards with built-in Firewire controller? Yes

5)While in the States,I heard something about FireWire 2.0 standart....? Is
it implemented yet?

Yes. It is 1394b (older version is 1394a)
Keep reading reviews on russian sites - there was a good one about a month ago.

Regards
--PA