09-14-2015, 10:23 PM
silvarios wrote:
[quote=Lew Zealand]
As an different example, USB3 will not let me run a 3440x1440 monitor on a 2011 or 2012 Mac at a reasonable refresh rate - 50Hz. In fact it won't do any refresh rate at all but Thunderbolt does. On these machines, you can run 3440x1440 at 30Hz with Displayport but no higher. TB enables the bandwidth to make this monitor usable.
That said, I bought a 2012 2.6 quad mini refurb to replace a 2011 2.0 quad mini refurb for equal parts USB3 and faster cpu. 2011 should have been USB3 but was USB2 only. Lame.
USB 3.0 is not a proper display output. I would never compare the two.
Yeah I know, but the discussion was moving towards storage only which is a limited way of viewing TB. That said, USB3 is the best option available for general storage for the vast majority of people— lots of speed and little cost.
I look at TB storage on occasion but the use case can only really improve once the rest of the storage chain catches up. I can move files from my UASP USB3 drive dock to & from the internal SSD at 420MB/sec. and TB can't deliver that data much faster as my SSD like most is SATA-III and tops out at 510MB/s. TB2 and 3 will get you more but really only for delivering data directly to working memory, not other devices unless they are also TB 2 or 3. Or PCI-E/M.2 SSDs.