#Usb 2 vs usb 3 usb 3.1 port full#

Speaking to Tom’s Hardware, USB Promoter Group CEO Brad Saunders said they just wanted to simplify things, and prevent the profusion of products sporting version number badges that could confuse consumers. So from now on, USB4 is the name until they come up with USB5. It was always annoying trying to figure out which version of USB was supported, what that meant and so on. The computing hardware industry is notoriously bad at naming stuff, and USB 3 was no exception to the rule. And despite the spec being published today, it’ll almost certainly be at least a year before any products come out that use it. These ports are complicated things and the ability to send more data, power and so on means it’s a little harder to make. Two not-so-good pieces of news, though: It won’t be here for a while and it might be a little more expensive. Changing that again would be disastrous - so the connector will be the same. We’re still in the transition period from the big rectangular port, the small trapezoidal one, the big trapezoidal one and so on, to the sleek USB-C plugs that you can’t do wrong even if you try. The other good news about USB4 is that it doesn’t use a new connector. It’s just one of those behind the scenes changes that will make things better and easier for everyone.

#Usb 2 vs usb 3 usb 3.1 port full#

USB4 does this much better, so if you have a monitor that uses 8 Gbps for its video bandwidth, the full 32 Gbps will be available for other purposes. Great! But sometimes, depending on how you set it up, it could only send one or the other, or speeds were greatly reduced. USB 3 introduced the ability to use a single cable to send power, data and a video signal (basically just more but specialized data) over a single cable. With USB 4, Thunderbolt and USB will converge Anyone making a USB4 device or cable can make it compatible with Intel’s standard it’s possible, but unlikely, that some will choose not to. But Intel has come to realize that it was counterproductive to split things off like this, so they’re providing the Thunderbolt 3 spec for free. Thunderbolt 3 is Intel’s proprietary implementation of USB 3, which you’d find on Intel boards and those of any company that had licensed the tech. It’ll also support the max speed of previous cables and interfaces. USB4 tops out at 40 gigabits per second, twice the speed of the latest version of USB 3 and 8 times the speed of the original USB 3 standard, which was of course itself way faster than what it was replacing. There are three main improvements in USB4 over USB 3 (or 3.2, or 3.1 gen2v2… the naming system is a mess):īetter speed. It’s another step in the process of bringing a major standard from idea to reality. USB4, as it’s now styled (versus USB 4), was announced in March with a few promises regarding features, but now the actual technical specifications have been released to anyone who cares to inspect them. And pedants take note: there’s no longer a space after “USB” and the number. It’ll be faster and bring improved compatibility, with no need to pay close attention to which cable or port you’re using. Wikipedia has a nice summary matrix.Īlso notice that it seems there are three ways to perform what at first sight is the same thing with USB-C Alt-Mode, USB4 DP Tunneling and TB3 DP Tunneling possibly supported simultaneously.The organizations behind the widely used USB standard have released some new info on the latest iteration of the interface, and it’s nothing but good news for consumers. When these devices become available, the difficulty from a customer stand point will be to identify which feature a constructor has decided to implement. Unfortunately a lot of them are optional depending on the type of device involved. Among them, several of Thunderbolt-3 tunneling capabilities. There is an impressive list of features that come with this version. In terms of transfer speed there are two flavors, 20 Gbit/s and 40 Gbit/s named respectively 'USB4 Gen 2×2' and 'USB4 Gen 3×2'.