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Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet?

I

icebergx

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 27, 2012
202
3
Copenhagen, Denmark
Hi all,
Quick question:
Seeing as gigabit ethernet has a maximum data transfer rate of 1000MB/sec and both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt have faster data transfer rates (5GB and 10GB/sec respectively I believe), is there any great advantage of buying one over the other. I understand the USB 3.0 converters tend to be much cheaper so was planning to go for that.

Thanks.
 
The only thing I could imagine to be different would be lag?

I know Tb works via PCIe 2.0. dunno how is it with USB3.0 and response time.
 
The question for a USB 3.0 to Gigabit is will they work on a Mac? Also, remember this is something you will be able to use on a future system, so while saving money is good, saving too much money on an item like this could be bad.
 
icebergx said:
Hi all,
Quick question:
Seeing as gigabit ethernet has a maximum data transfer rate of 1000MB/sec and both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt have faster data transfer rates (5GB and 10GB/sec respectively I believe), is there any great advantage of buying one over the other. I understand the USB 3.0 converters tend to be much cheaper so was planning to go for that.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think you have the right idea, but all the speeds you mentioned are in bits/s not Bytes/s. Regardless, USB 3 should be plenty fast for an ethernet connection
 
Mrbobb said:
Yeah man, no OSX driver = brick.
Click to expand...

How can I find out if it will/will not work?

Essentially, all I want to do is be able to stream Blue ray quality content to my media server, from my rMBP, and maybe do some other content transfer between devices like my NAS. As long as there isn't any stutter, I'm happy :)
 
icebergx said:
How can I find out if it will/will not work?

Essentially, all I want to do is be able to stream Blue ray quality content to my media server, from my rMBP, and maybe do some other content transfer between devices like my NAS. As long as there isn't any stutter, I'm happy :)
Click to expand...

It has to say, "works with mac/osx" etc.

Or just buy a TB adapter from Apple and yr done.

Look man, cabling is so 20 century. You should be able to stream 1080p through 802.11n AS LONG AS your WIFI AP has QOS.
 
The Apple TB adapter is $30. You can't get much cheaper for a quality plug and play NIC.
 
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