>Taking into account SuperSpeed USB’s 8b/10b encoding, flow control, packet framing, and protocol overhead reduces effective throughput to a “realistic” 400MB/s for actual applications.
What is interesting is that FireWire’s original spec was generally faster than USB 2.0’s when you compare the two on the actual throughput; now with USB 3.0, perhaps it would be best to compare it to FireWire’s third revision (3200) as the following article tries: http://www.techiesouls.com/2008/12/03/usb-30-vs-firewire-3200/
I am in full agreement with the commentator there who said:
“I’ve been a fan of firewire for many years. It has never let me down.”
“I only have on problem with USB and that is they have always claimed speeds of 480mpbs while only delivering about 65% of that. Firewire on the other hand runs at about 97% of its claims. With that said I’m guessing Firewire 3200 will blow USB 3.0 out of the water. Just my $.02”
Well, I’d rather use FireWire, but the peripherals all come with USB. Drive enclosures, printers, digital cameras, cell phones, etc. To a lesser extent you have the same problem with laptops, which always have USB but rarely FireWire. That can be fixed with a PC Card, but what are you going to do about the peripherals?