I don't know jack about the USB interface; could it ever get fast enough so that you could use USB to host devices like peformance-boosting CPUs or coprocessors, or have USB as a way to add a RAM disk that performs as well as main memory, or even something like a USB-based video card that can perform like an internal card?

Great news. Given the maximum transfer USB 2.0 speeds does now, that's a good 1.5mb/sec real world transfer speeds for USB 3.0.

Awesome! We have faster transfer rates now.

Is a Sandisk Cruzer a USB 2.0, though? It's the U3 version.

That sounds good but we'll need the disks to feed at that speed. And btw, eSata does the same.

pparks1 said:

IggyAZ said:

When it starts arriving on all MB's will be a great day. The transfer speed is fantastic compared to USBII.
Can you imagion the extrnal HD transfer speed compared to thte present USBII.
WOW!

Well, the current USB speeds are around 30-40MB/s. And most mechanical hard drives top out around 80-90MB/s. So, USB3 is only going to effectively double our current speeds since we are limited by the hard drives themselves. So, I'm not that terribly excited about USB3 yet.

Why? You can have internal transfer speeds on an external device. That's nothing but good news.

JonM33 said:

pparks1 said:

IggyAZ said:

When it starts arriving on all MB's will be a great day. The transfer speed is fantastic compared to USBII.
Can you imagion the extrnal HD transfer speed compared to thte present USBII.
WOW!

Well, the current USB speeds are around 30-40MB/s. And most mechanical hard drives top out around 80-90MB/s. So, USB3 is only going to effectively double our current speeds since we are limited by the hard drives themselves. So, I'm not that terribly excited about USB3 yet.

Why? You can have internal transfer speeds on an external device. That's nothing but good news.

Yeah, but you have to have a device that can make use of all that good speed. That's why eSata was never very popular. The disks did not transfer any faster because the channel is fast.

whs said:

Yeah, but you have to have a device that can make use of all that good speed. That's why eSata was never very popular. The disks did not transfer any faster because the channel is fast.

eSATA was never popular because it needs a proprietary connection, in some cases needed ACHI to be enabled in the BIOS for hot-swap capability, has a very limited cable length and was overall a pain in the rear. It had nothing to do with performance.

USB 3.0 is completely backwards compatible with current USB 2.0 ports and on USB 3.0 offers nearly identical internal transfer rates. It's the same as USB 2.0's positives and none of the negatives (slow transfer rate, all devices are on a hub and share bandwidth, etc).