ECS K7VTA3 8.0c and USB 2.0

[mrchan]

the board has 4 USB ports in the back, and connectors for 2 additonal ones. i2 of the USB ports should be USB 2.0

But i get USB 1.1 transfer rates out of all of them. is there a driver or an update i need?

WinXP Pro, all SPs+updates

VIA 4n1 Driver from ECS website

What do I do?

 

[o1die]

There should be a usb 2.0 driver on the cd that came with the motherboard.

 

[Goi]

I have the same board, but I'm not sure if its 8.0c. Shouldn't the VIA Hyperion 4in1 drivers take care of the USB ports as well? Anyway, other than measuring the speed, how else can you find out if your ports are USB1.1 or USB2.0?

 

[mrchan]

hm, i thought winxp + sp1 was supposed to take care of USB 2.0. will try that.

 

[Peter]

Actually, it doesn't. You aren't the first to discover that.

All the ports on this board are USB 2.0 "High Speed" capable. That'll happen only if you connect an actual High Speed device onto it. Many devices advertized as "USB 2.0" are just Full or even Low speed, which translates to them being USB 1.1 with a new badge on.

Also please mind that many cases still offer a front USB port wiring that isn't shielded well enough for High Speed operation.

 

[Zap]

Check the Southbridge, should be a VIA 8235 for USB 2.0, not a VIA 8233. Peter is right in saying that some cases with front USB ports may not be fully capable of the higher speed (though personally I haven't seen a difference, maybe data corruption?) plus many devices don't take advantage of the higher speeds. For instance, most webcams, digital cameras, printers, scanners, joysticks, etc. are all lower speed since they wouldn't be able to use the higher speed. External storage devices, network devices and video devices are the only things I can think of off hand that would even benefit from the higher speed at this time.

WinXP with SP1 supports the higher speed. If your WinXP did not come with SP1 and you had to install SP1 after the initial Windows install, the USB doesn't get updated automatically. AFTER SP1 install you have to go into Device Manager and you'll see a USB device with an error. Double-click on it, and do a driver update. It should automatically find the right driver.

The best way I know of to test for increased transfer speeds is to use a USB 2.0 external hard drive. The difference from USB 1.1 to 2.0 is like night and day. A minute or two per gig of data becomes a half hour on the slower interface.