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Printer speed, USB vs LPT

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by daz'n'ash May 12, 2002 last reply May 13, 2002

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I would like to know if there truly is a difference in speed of printing using either LPT cable or USB cable. When the printer is connected via LPT1 port, it is slow to begin printing, when using USB cable, the printing begins almost immediately.Also, using 2 different pentium class computers, one with 544 MB Ram and a 466 MhZ CPU, this one the printing seems quite fast, and the other a humble 233 MhZ CPU with 128 MB Ram. This computer seems to print slow. Does the RAM, CPU speed and USB connection truly make a speed difference?

Both PCs use Windows Millennium Edition. (yeah yeah, I know, get rid of ME and get XP... ;-) )

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by thechas May 12, 2002

Yes, USB should start printing faster, as the data transfer rate is faster than the old LPT port.
Once the buffer on the printer is full, you should see no further speed differences.
Of course, some high speed printers can print faster than an older LPT port can transfer the data.

Secondly, in Windows, not just CPU speed and RAM, but disk access speed all make a difference in printing speed.
When you go to print form most applications, the first thing that happens is a file is created to "spool" the data from the application to the printer.
For a small print job, this file may reside entirely in RAM.
For a large print job, this file will expand into virtual memory (swap / page file) and may even become a seperate file on the PC.
So, CPU speed, determines how fast the file is created.
RAM amount, determines if the file resides in memory, or is written to the hard disk.
HDD transfer speed, determines how fast the data is transferred between the "spool" file and the data port that the printer is connected to.

The 233MHz system would run around 20% faster if you "down-graded" the OS to W95. 98 and Me have a lot more system over-head that the PC has to deal with to perform any task.
I don't recommend 98 for PCs with less than 300MHz CPUs.

Chas