USB 2.0 ports... onboard or PCI?

[sillyguy]

i have plenty of usb2.0 ports now since my motherboard gave me a total of 8, and i also have a usb2.0 PCI card. is there any difference at all between using the ports onboard and the ports on the PCI card?

 

[Vflux]

I dont think there are any difference, instead your rig having more usb connectors. If you arent using all of it. I say stick with the onboard usb. Your rig is much cleaner without the pci usb ports IMO........

 

[sillyguy]

the card is just lying around anyway, thought i can put it to some use

i dunno if the PCI card would drag down performance by taking up any resources (?? ). i'm a noob at this so thats why i asked...

 

[FTC]

Hi, normally onboard ports are a bit faster (20% or so) just because they don't have to compete for the PCI bus. Only in the case that your onboard USB2 chip is VIA or ALI AND your PCI card is NEC chipset based I would recommend installing it, because it has been proven that NEC is USB2 host chipset king, with a lot less compatibility problems than the other solutions,... and also faster in general.

Regards
FTC

 

[Stedeman]

There is 2 revs of the NEC chip set the original USB2.0 and a newer one that's faster and more stable. I don't recall the ID string for the chip but I can tell you that it dose make a big difference. Also the 8 onboard may only be 4 2.0's read the owners manual on it.

 

[sillyguy]

yep my PCI card uses NEC chipset (not sure what rev it is. it says D720101GJ on the chip), but Asus never mentioned the type of USB controller on my K8N-E Dlx. i looked into my system properties and it says "Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller" (?) i wonder what it is..

 

[Aslan]

Hi, normally onboard ports are a bit faster (20% or so) just because they don't have to compete for the PCI bus. Only in the case that your onboard USB2 chip is VIA or ALI AND your PCI card is NEC chipset based I would recommend installing it, because it has been proven that NEC is USB2 host chipset king, with a lot less compatibility problems than the other solutions,... and also faster in general.

Regards
FTC

I wish I knew this before I bought a USB 2.0 card for my file server. Ah well, the VIA based D-Link card is working well enough.

Honestly, regardless of chipset, I wouldn't bother installing the USB 2.0 card unless you actually need it. If you have an older system that doesn't have USB 2.0, then I would put it in that, as it would gain more of a benefit.

 

[Stedeman]

"D720100A" is the first one so you have a newer one

 

[sillyguy]

"D720100A" is the first one so you have a newer one

sweet thx for the clarification. but i guess i'll get rid of it anyway... taking it out it becomes useless, keeping it in it's still useless. owell