USB 3.0 impact?

[LAMeduck]

Hello,
I have with my new Dell XPS 15 the infamous USB 3.0 problem with the Kontrol S4, so my question reads; does the USB 3.0 port do any difference in comparison to the USB 2.0 ports in terms of latency etc (benefits)? Does the Kontrol S4 take advantage of the bandwith/speed of USB 3.0?

In other words, should I call Dell on Monday and scuffle or ignore it and make do with the USB 2.0 ports?

Grateful for any input!

[mostapha]

Ignore it.

USB 3.0 won't have any effect on the S4. I don't think it'll have an effect on anything, actually…it's not fast enough to show any advantage over firewire.

[JSM]

USB3 on the XPS will not work for audio, it will never work until they update the chipset (this also includes the 15z and the Gen2 XPS).

Data throughput is much higher on an external SSD with USB3 compared to the SATA connection ... so use it for data only, don't plug in any audio gear.

[mostapha]

Uhh…what? USB3.0 is faster than SATA? I call BS. 2-minutes on google looking at benchmarks backs me up.

Either there's something wrong with your sata card or it's really old.

[selbekk]

USB speeds doesn't matter with midi controllers. The amount of data sent is minimal (not several megabytes per second, to put it that way), so no benefit will be gained.

Besides, the SPEED of data transfer is basically the same, the CAPACITY is what has been upped with USB 3.0. And with regards to controllers, capacity has never been a problem.

[fullenglishpint]

Unless the device you plug into your USB3 port is USB3 compatible you'll see no improvement over USB2.0, in the same way that plugging a USB1.1 device into a USB2.0 port doesn't magically make it faster.

The S4 is USB2.0 so USB3 will give you no advantage. In fact I've heard people having problems plugging USB2.0 devices into USB3 ports.

[JSM]

@mostapha .... not to upset you, but it's you that doesn't understand.

SATA = 150mbs
SATAII = 300mbs
SATA3 = 6gbs - recently released

USB2 = 480mbs
USB3 = 5Gbs .....

or if you don't believe me, buy a SSD drive, pop it into a USB3 cradle connect it to you USB3 card ... and you will see.

20+ years high level experience and ownership of the kit gives me the right to correct you.

[mostapha]

@mostapha .... not to upset you, but it's you that doesn't understand.

SATA = 150mbs
SATAII = 300mbs
SATA3 = 6gbs - recently released

USB2 = 480mbs
USB3 = 5Gbs .....

or if you don't believe me, buy a SSD drive, pop it into a USB3 cradle connect it to you USB3 card ... and you will see.

20+ years high level experience and ownership of the kit gives me the right to correct you.

I use Apple, which means that I use real buses. Your numbers mean absolute shit. USB2–in practice–is slower than FW400. And I only have SATA3 available, which is what my SSD is running on. Had it almost a year. That's not recent in computer terms, PCs just suck at using current technology that matters.

I know for a fact that your number for USB2 is garbage, it's a design spec number for burst data rate, not the sustained data rate or data bandwidth that actually matters. In practice, it's a lot slower and gets trumped by FW400 and basically everything else available, which PCs never come with but some macs have. Why would I think anything else you say is accurate?

Not quoting numbers made up by marketing departments gives me the right to call you out.

Being right gives me the right to put you on my ignore list. Goodbye.

[JSM]

Yawn .... complete twaddle ! and "real buses" made me and my colleagues almost wet ourselves with laughter ........

both the Mac and the PC have shared the same architecture since the demise of the G4/G5 platform. So much so that I run one of my laptops (an ACER) with OSX Lion.

As for FW400/800 .. PC's have had that too for many many years.

I have done some tests today on this and three other machines, would you like me to publish thee results to show what an idiot you've been.

Before calling someone a bullshitter or telling someone that they write garbage, you REALLY need to know your facts first, which you obviously DON'T.

I am and have been for the last 26 years a highly qualified and requested engineer, I have been working with Dell and Renasys on the USB3 audio issue (see previous posts).

I build in my day job huge data arrays, with EMc using SAS and FiberChannel, I pull out SCSI RAID systems in my sleep ... so when it comes to this subject ..... nuff said... you need to stop buying the Apple song and go back to school and learn something.

thanks for Blocking/ignoring me, less for me to do.

The rest of the people reading this posting, the stuff published on the internet is often WRONG, do the tests yourself, prove the theory and then you will see the difference.

Take out your SSD put it into a USB3 cradle, connected it to your USB3 ports and then look at the results, no bottleneck from SATA2 and you will get over 285Mb/s, if you connect it to eSATA2 or internal SATA2 you will get approximately 115Mb/s.

Obviously if you then connect it to a SATA3 port and you have a SATA3 SSD it will get close to 525Mbs .... or at least all of my PC based units do.


I use Corsair Force 3 GT 120Gb SATA3 - external
OCZ Vertex 3 512Gb x 2 in RAID - internal

compared to

WD Caviar Black 500Gb SATA2
Seagate ST3 500Gb SATA2

platforms used

Dell XPS L701x - renasys USB3
gigabyte P45 based board - VIA USB3
Asus P5 based board - Ti USB3
Sony Vaio i5 laptop (forgot the model) - renasys USB3

block size 4K

testing programs

HDtune Pro 5
Bricks
CrystalDiskMark

[fullenglishpint]

Jesus, everyone give up on the mud slinging and calm the fuck down. Flaming wars are so last decade.

USB3 is pretty damn fast, but also at the moment almost totally irrelevant to at least 99% of the people on this forum.

When a USB3 controller comes about, maybe we should have the speed argument. But since it wouldn't be mac compatible that's probably not going to happen, so let's just all forget about it.