Windows 7: Thunderbolt Controller 10 Times More Expensive than USB 3.0

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Maximum PC | Thunderbolt Controller 10 Times More Expensive than USB 3.0

Nice new technologies !

USB 3.0 = $1, Thunderbolt = $10, a $9 difference. While I can understand how this would make a difference to a manufacturer, I really don't understand the last sentence of the article:

That makes it appear to be a significant factor for an individual's purchasing decision, but I don't see how it would tip the scales. From what I read, Thunderbolt is twice as fast as USB 3.0, and if that only cost $9 more, I have no doubt as to which I would choose...unless there is something else to consider.

What would you plug into this new USB that would use the extra speed. Surly not a mouse, keyboard, printer or drive.

The article talks about file transfer speed. If one had an external USB hard drive, where they kept a lot of large files like videos, Then I would think that the extra performance would be quite noticeable. My video archive is connected via eSATA2, which is okay for one or two file transfer at a time, but when I have had to transfer a large number of files simultaneously, it can be quite tedious waiting.

Is your hard drive able to handle those high speeds.

Never tried it, but I would like to. The worse that could happen is that it would bottleneck the speed. USB 3.0 max speed is 60MB/s second, so I would guess that Thunderbolt is ~120MB/s. That might push a SATA II's ability, but it shouldn't with SATA III. On my system, I wouldn't be surprised if some other component wouldn't bottleneck it.

Thunderbolt is 20Gbps or 2.5GBps which is a lot faster then USB 3 and is a transport medium and can handle multiple protocols like PCIe and Display Port. It just depends of the controller chip as to what protocol can be used. Future versions will use fiber to greatly increase the speed. You can daisy chain up to 7 devices (if i recall correctly) on one cable so you could have multiple devices running different protocols on one port on you PC.

Jim

It should be noted that the speeds that I post were in MBs not Mbps. I'm not sure where your numbers come from, because according to this article the max Thunderbolt speed is 10Gbps:

Up to speed with Thunderbolt (week in review) | Business Tech - CNET News

You all ought to get your numbers straight, they are not correct.

The maximum USB 3.0 link speed is 5 Gb/s. The maximum throughput on USB 3.0 is 4 Gbits/s = 500 MB/s not 60 MB/s. You will probably get 400 MB/s at best in practice.

To Layback Bear - yes an USB 3.0 connected SSD or raid box can use all of that bandwidth. A single disk will run at full rate of ~120 MB/s instead of being limited to about 30 MB/s by USB 2.0, and it will be better for a portable hard drive in the end than eSATA as USB3.0 becomes ubiquitous. In addition, there are already USB3.0 jump drives available that can transfer at disk drives speeds - USB 3.0 has enabled this advancement.

EDIT: Compact flash cards now go up to 90 MB/s. USB 3.0 card readers (I have one) can read these out at full speed, which is great for Photographers with large images