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USB 2.0 issue on Asus P4T533-C

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Tugboat

Registered
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Location
California
Okay, this is driving me crazy. I hope there's a USB expert here and/or someone that has seen this problem and knows how to fix it. I'm posting this as my last attempt to fix it. If I can't with help here, I'm gonna get a USB 2.0 PCI card and hope that does the job.

Anyway, I have an Asus P4T533-C with USB 2.0 onboard (NEC chipset). I have XP Pro with SP2 and all the proper drivers loaded for USB 2.0. Device Manager shows it as an "enhanced" controller. I have an iwin memory card reader that is USB 2.0 connected to the internal header and a VEO Velocity Connect USB 2.0 web cam connected to the external connection. I have a WD USB 2.0/firewire external 250G drive that when connected to firewire gives me a transfer speed of 39MB/s. When connected to the USB 2.0 port, it give me 15.9MB/s transfer. If I disconnect the web cam, the transfer rate goes up to 17.2MB/s. If I also disconnect the card reader, the transfer goes up to 19.8MB/s. That's the highest transfer rate I can get when it's the only USB 2.0 device. I also have tried another external USB 2.0 with a WD 320G drive and the numbers are the same.

I know I'm running in the USB 2.0 range as 19.8MB/s is only possible with USB 2.0, but is still slower than what I should be getting. Firewire gives me twice the transfer speed. I've tried everything I can think of to fix it (different drivers, caching, etc.). Starting to wonder if it's a bad implementation of the NEC USB 2.0 chipset on the MB by Asus. I'm thinking about disabling the onboard and getting an Adaptec PCI controller. Before I do that I wanted to see if there are any thoughts or suggestions here.

Thanks!
 
If I understand USB setup correctly, the more devices you have on the same controller, the more "chatty" the USB traffic will be and the slower the throughput speed of any specific devices would be. If you managed to pile enough hubs and devices to max out 127 devices limit, I'll bet your hard drive will crawl like it's on ancient 1.0. Installing a separate USB card usually will help relief that issue.

Firewire generally doesn't have that issue as they managed their traffic a bit quieter than USB.
 
Well at most I have three devices (card reader, web cam and HD). I'm gonna assume that unless I am running an app that accesses the cam, or a mem card inserted and accessing it, they should be about zero in use of bandwidth. The best transfer speed I get with the HD is when I disconnect the card reader and cam. Still, that only gets me to just under 20MB/s transfer and it is the only device on the USB 2.0 bus. I have no hubs, etc.

I can't remember exactly what firewire has over USB when it comes to data transfer, but I know I'll not be able to get the same numbers from USB 2.0 that I get from firewire. Do wish I could remember exactly where firewire gets its edge. I'm sure it will come to me eventually. I just know that in theory, I should be able to get 48MB/s from USB 2.0 based on its specs (I know in the real world it will be a bit lower, but not as low as I am getting). The drive in the external enclosure gets 59MB/s transfer when connected to an IDE cable in the machine.

Thanks for you input! It's much appreciated!
 
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