Is firewire here to stay on the pc platform?

[eflat]

although macs use usb just as much as firewire now

what makes me wonder is that i have this nice msi neo4 motherboard.

the problem is that it does not have any firewire ports! and all the antec cases i am using have a useless firewire port on the front if my motherboard doesn't support it.

which just kind of pisses of the perfectionist within me.

so what are ya'lls thoughts on the future of firewire?

 

[Jiggz]

Firewire and USB has been on MAC for the longest time. In fact, it was the PC that derived them from the MAC. Yes, the firewire will be here with us for a long time still. Even with the advent of the Firewire B which is faster, the present firewire will still be here for awhile.

 

[erwos]

Firewire is in a rather inconvienient format for connecting all your peripherals to, due to the way you have to daisy-chain everything SCSI-style. That alone is a serious usability problem for anything that needs to move semi-regularly. I say this as someone who's got four hard drives in a Firewire daisy-chain. Firewire, in other words, is never going to replace USB.

I think the jury is out on whether USB will eventually replace Firewire. There are some thoroughput issues with USB that still need to be resolved. I think it is more likely that the combination of eSATA and USB will push Firewire to a more niche status.

-Erwos

 

[eflat]

Originally posted by: erwos
Firewire is in a rather inconvienient format for connecting all your peripherals to, due to the way you have to daisy-chain everything SCSI-style. That alone is a serious usability problem for anything that needs to move semi-regularly. I say this as someone who's got four hard drives in a Firewire daisy-chain. Firewire, in other words, is never going to replace USB.

I think the jury is out on whether USB will eventually replace Firewire. There are some thoroughput issues with USB that still need to be resolved. I think it is more likely that the combination of eSATA and USB will push Firewire to a more niche status.

-Erwos

eSATA?

 

[darkswordsman17]

external Serial ATA. Its just an external SATA port. Would be very handy for hard drives.

I have never had or used a peripheral that uses firewire. I know theres some very good things that Firewire is capable of (video streaming for one), but I've just never had a use for it, so its always been a moot point when picking out a motherboard/case/computer for me personally.

 

[Mickey Eye]

My nice MSI neo4 mobo has a fire wire port on it. Which one is it?

 

[klah]

pwned

I guess Apple is not too concerned about all of the iBook/Powerbook owners with Firewire and USB1.1.

"Syncing, 11 hours 8 minutes remaining" lol.

 

[LED]

I'd add one 1394b card as i feel it transfers data on external HD's as fast as my interals and the fact that it's backward compatible makes it 1 viable solution for DV Camera hookups...

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: klah
pwned

I guess Apple is not too concerned about all of the iBook/Powerbook owners with Firewire and USB1.1.

"Syncing, 11 hours 8 minutes remaining" lol.

No firewire on the new iPod?

That's stupid. :roll:

 

[SGtheArtist]

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by: klah
pwned

I guess Apple is not too concerned about all of the iBook/Powerbook owners with Firewire and USB1.1.

"Syncing, 11 hours 8 minutes remaining" lol.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


LOL that is the funniest sh*t.

I personally think that firewire has a bright future more so then eSATA (which to my knowledge is not daisy chain capable). As I understand it Firewire 800 (1394b) is currently making its way into the market with a 100MB/s bandwidth and they are working on Firewire 1600 which will double this.

Could you imagine a external storage rack with daisy chained Firewire drives > it would only require a single firewire cable to connect to the host PC. On the other hand the same external storage rack would require a cable to the PC for EVERY single drive in the rack. That's not easily scalable (sp?).

 

[erwos]

1394b has a bandwidth of 800mb/s. SATA2 right now has a bandwidth of 3gb/s. It is going to take a _long_ time for Firewire to catch up. That's not to mention the problems that most 1394 enclosures have with SMART, making them totally unsuitable for serious usage.

Also, remember that you're still sharing bandwidth on your daisy chain. eSATA requires more wires, but there's no way you're going to run out of bandwidth. With Firewire, that's a real possibility. I vaguely recall that SATA does have some sort of splitting capability, but I've never seen it used in practice.

I _right now_ have such a Firewire rack. It does not work nearly as well as you think in practice.

-Erwos

 

[daniel1113]

Originally posted by: erwos
Firewire is in a rather inconvienient format for connecting all your peripherals to, due to the way you have to daisy-chain everything SCSI-style. That alone is a serious usability problem for anything that needs to move semi-regularly. I say this as someone who's got four hard drives in a Firewire daisy-chain. Firewire, in other words, is never going to replace USB.

Funny. That's the exact reason I much prefer Firewire to USB for most applications.

 

[SGtheArtist]

So 800mb/s (100MB/s) isn't enough? You NEED 3gb/s (375MB/s) for that harddrive that maxes out at 150MB/s (theoretically).

I suppose if you copied to (or from) numerous 3 or more Firewire 800 harddrives (that are daisy chained together) AT THE SAME TIME! then you would probably be better off using eSATA, but wait.

All those individual 3gb/s eSATA drives run into a single PCI expansion card that communicates on the PCI bus at 133MB/s, so I guess you will be bandwidth limited somewhere in the PC unless of course you invest big money on leading edge technology that has the bandwidth that will allow you to perform the example explained above. Say PCI-X or 64bit PCI, price a motherboard that has these features $$$.

IMO, Firewire is pretty capable for the average PC user and that is why it will remain mainstream like USB where as eSATA will be limited to extreme users or corporate servers.

 

[Some1ne]

"Macs getting more popular and all"? Please, the war is over, macs lost, they lost years and years ago, and they're not going to change anything now.

what makes me wonder is that i have this nice msi neo4 motherboard

Which Neo4? I have the Neo4 Platinum, and it has a firewire port on the back, as well as internal headers for my Antec Sonata's front port. I think I left mine unconnected as I don't use firewire and even if I somehow end up with something that does, there's the other port that will work just fine. I think the only Neo4 that doesn't have firewire is the 'Neo4-F', which is the budget offering.

so what are ya'lls thoughts on the future of firewire?

It'll stick around, but it's popularity won't change much...kind of like the macs themselves.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: C6FT7

Originally posted by: klah
pwned

I guess Apple is not too concerned about all of the iBook/Powerbook owners with Firewire and USB1.1.

"Syncing, 11 hours 8 minutes remaining" lol.

No firewire on the new iPod?

That's stupid. :roll:

IIRC, the firewire chipset is too big to easily fit in the smaller iPods.

 

[obeseotron]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
Firewire and USB has been on MAC for the longest time. In fact, it was the PC that derived them from the MAC. Yes, the firewire will be here with us for a long time still. Even with the advent of the Firewire B which is faster, the present firewire will still be here for awhile.

While apple did invent and holds the patents on firewire, USB is an Intel creation. Apple was just quick to adopt it and force a transition to USB peripherals. PCs had USB first, but it was useful first on the Mac. USB predates AGP on PCs.

Anyway, firewire is not long for this world. Even iPods don't work with it any more. DV equipment is about the only thing you'll see using firewire from here on in.. Firewire 800 doesn't seem to have caught on with anyone either.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: SGtheArtist
So 800mb/s (100MB/s) isn't enough? You NEED 3gb/s (375MB/s) for that harddrive that maxes out at 150MB/s (theoretically).

I suppose if you copied to (or from) numerous 3 or more Firewire 800 harddrives (that are daisy chained together) AT THE SAME TIME! then you would probably be better off using eSATA, but wait.

All those individual 3gb/s eSATA drives run into a single PCI expansion card that communicates on the PCI bus at 133MB/s, so I guess you will be bandwidth limited somewhere in the PC unless of course you invest big money on leading edge technology that has the bandwidth that will allow you to perform the example explained above. Say PCI-X or 64bit PCI, price a motherboard that has these features $$$.

IMO, Firewire is pretty capable for the average PC user and that is why it will remain mainstream like USB where as eSATA will be limited to extreme users or corporate servers.

100MB/s THEORETICAL MAXIMUM vs 375MB theoretical maximum, means you have a lot more headroom on the SATA.
Oh yeah, Firewire is slower than SATA or IDE.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: SGtheArtist
So 800mb/s (100MB/s) isn't enough? You NEED 3gb/s (375MB/s) for that harddrive that maxes out at 150MB/s (theoretically).

I suppose if you copied to (or from) numerous 3 or more Firewire 800 harddrives (that are daisy chained together) AT THE SAME TIME! then you would probably be better off using eSATA, but wait.

All those individual 3gb/s eSATA drives run into a single PCI expansion card that communicates on the PCI bus at 133MB/s, so I guess you will be bandwidth limited somewhere in the PC unless of course you invest big money on leading edge technology that has the bandwidth that will allow you to perform the example explained above. Say PCI-X or 64bit PCI, price a motherboard that has these features $$$.

IMO, Firewire is pretty capable for the average PC user and that is why it will remain mainstream like USB where as eSATA will be limited to extreme users or corporate servers.

100MB/s THEORETICAL MAXIMUM vs 375MB theoretical maximum, means you have a lot more headroom on the SATA.

Headroom that won't be realized without expensive raid setups.

Oh yeah, Firewire is slower than SATA or IDE.

I wonder how much that would change if there were FW native devices out there...

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: SGtheArtist
So 800mb/s (100MB/s) isn't enough? You NEED 3gb/s (375MB/s) for that harddrive that maxes out at 150MB/s (theoretically).

I suppose if you copied to (or from) numerous 3 or more Firewire 800 harddrives (that are daisy chained together) AT THE SAME TIME! then you would probably be better off using eSATA, but wait.

All those individual 3gb/s eSATA drives run into a single PCI expansion card that communicates on the PCI bus at 133MB/s, so I guess you will be bandwidth limited somewhere in the PC unless of course you invest big money on leading edge technology that has the bandwidth that will allow you to perform the example explained above. Say PCI-X or 64bit PCI, price a motherboard that has these features $$$.

IMO, Firewire is pretty capable for the average PC user and that is why it will remain mainstream like USB where as eSATA will be limited to extreme users or corporate servers.

100MB/s THEORETICAL MAXIMUM vs 375MB theoretical maximum, means you have a lot more headroom on the SATA.

Headroom that won't be realized without expensive raid setups.

Oh yeah, Firewire is slower than SATA or IDE.

I wonder how much that would change if there were FW native devices out there...

It also doesn' have anything showing external SATA ports (like you can get on some add in cards) which may offer different performance to onboard SATA ports (either faster or slower), so the test isn't conclusive, but then the HDD was Seagate 7200.7's, not the fastest HDDs there are, so FW may be more of a bottleneck with faster drives (eg: Raptor)

 

[SGtheArtist]

"We used just 1GB of fast 2-2-2 system memory set up as a 450MB RAM disk and 550MB of system memory. Our stock file was the SPECviewPerf install file, which is 432,533,504 bytes (412.4961MB). After copying this file to our RAM disk, we measured the time for writing from the RAM disk to our external USB 2.0 or Firewire 400 or Firewire 800 drive using a Windows timing program written for AnandTech by our own Jason Clark."

RAM Disk!!!

In addition 460mb/s is ONLY 57.5MB/s Not even close to 3gb/s (375MB/s) which is about the current level of performance from the consumer level HDDs. How much unnecessary overhead bandwidth do you need to waste??? I never stated that Firewire was "faster" than SATA. I simply was trying to convey that for the average user Firewire will be around for a while and is often used for additional storage which doesn't require the upmost of performance.

In fact Firewire 400 only pushing 210mb/s (26.25MB/s stated in the article) can even play back an HDTV 1080i stream at 19.4mb/s (2.4MB/s). Unfortunately Firewire 400 won't be able to support the 5th Generation HDTV > Super Duper Ultra Leet HHDDTV in 2030 which will require 50MB/s.:roll:

Thats like building a Athlon X2 4400+ or anything highend and ONLY surfing the internet > Its a waste.

IMO, eSATA (assuming it has the same bandwidth as SATA) would be worth it only if I was a business that needed to backup several GB of data in very small windows of time.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey


IIRC, the firewire chipset is too big to easily fit in the smaller iPods.

Ok that's believable.

I don't want nor need any smaller. Give me something with more space (600GB would be nice) and 24 bit capability with cleaner burr brown op amps.

 

[foodfightr]

Originally posted by: Some1ne
"Macs getting more popular and all"? Please, the war is over, macs lost, they lost years and years ago, and they're not going to change anything now.

Its true, even IPOd is just a trend.

 

[gwag]

Macs didn't loose any war there still the fastest and have the best OS. Have fun clicking on "my computer"<-still forking retarded after all these years. what if its not your computer? and those network places are they really yours?

 

[canadageek]

I vote with gwag...
Macs are just for the discrimminating user...their stuff has always been better designed than any other desktop PC. the new generation of Macs just reinforces that. as well, Apple's products always look better...anyone else ever notice that?

 

[obeseotron]

Originally posted by: canadageek
I vote with gwag...
Macs are just for the discrimminating user...their stuff has always been better designed than any other desktop PC. the new generation of Macs just reinforces that. as well, Apple's products always look better...anyone else ever notice that?

I full agree that apple probably has the best industrial design, top to bottom, of any company remotely involved in computers. That being said, comparing a Mac to a Dell sort of misses the point. Compare a mac to a high end boutique type pc maker, not one sold at Best Buy, and the difference in design quality quickly shrinks. Tiger is superior to XP by a longshot, but is hardly perfect and Apple makes mistakes too:Mighty Mouse. Finally I don't think Apple would like to see the benchmarks of $3000 dual dualcore opteron worksation compared to their 3 grand box.