EX58-UD3R USB problem

[jeffjones]

Hi, I have a Gigabyte ex58-ud3r, intel i7, 6GB DDR3. Win 7 x64 retail.

My USB ports in Device Manager only show 2 ports operating under "Enhanced" mode, here's a screen shot:

http://i54.photobucket.com/alb...l66/usbcontrollers.jpg


I'm getting dog slow transfers between my USB thumb drives and the OS, about 5MB/second. Is that a limitation of the thumb drive itself (Kingston Data Traveler 8GB) or the port?

I was under the impression that USB 2.0 should transfer data from *at least* 12MB/sec, and up to 40MB.

A friend of mine with Win7 x64 shows all 8 of his USB ports as Enhanced.

I tried installing various chipset drivers, no go.

I tried removing the devices from dev-mgr and letting windows re-find them, no go.

I tried updating driver on each, no go.

Any suggestions?

 

[Zap]

Hello jeffjones, and welcome to Anandtech Forums.

Check BIOS to see if there are any USB settings you can change, perhaps from "full speed" to "high speed."

12M is "full speed," referring to the full speed of USB 1.

It also could be that the flash drive is slow. I have some Sandisk 32MB (not GB, MB) USB 2.0 flash drives that are pretty slow. I also have some larger drives which read really fast, but write really slow.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: jeffjones
My USB ports in Device Manager only show 2 ports operating under "Enhanced" mode, here's a screen shot:

That's normal. There's usually only one or two "Enhanced" controllers, that handle all the ports.

Originally posted by: jeffjones
I'm getting dog slow transfers between my USB thumb drives and the OS, about 5MB/second. Is that a limitation of the thumb drive itself (Kingston Data Traveler 8GB) or the port?

Honestly? That sounds about normal. Most flash drives are around 5MB/sec for writes (of big files), and 8-10MB/sec for reads.

Originally posted by: jeffjones
I was under the impression that USB 2.0 should transfer data from *at least* 12MB/sec, and up to 40MB.

Hardly.
Unless you bought a special high-speed, dual-channel flash drive, you won't get 12MB/sec writes, although some flash drives can read that fast.

40MB/sec on ANYTHING USB 2.0, is pure dreaming. Even external SATA HDs, that have raw platter transfer rates of 100+MB/sec, only transfer 30MB/sec over USB 2.0. The interface is just THAT SLOW.

 

[lopri]

Almost all modern chipsets come with two (2) EHCI controllers, and each port will auto-negotiate the appropriate speed to the device plugged.

http://www.intel.com/Assets/Im...m/X58_blockdiagram.gif

So if you plug in a USB 2.0 device, the port will become a 2.0 port, and if you plug in a USB 1.0 device then the port will behave as a 1.0 port. In the past there were boards that did not implement the correct switching mechanism and had fixed 1.0 ports and 2.0 ports, but those were rare cases and certainly not applicable to X58. And under such a situation you would see a Windows message "Device can perform better.... blah blah".

I also suspect the thumb drive being responsible for the slow transfer speed. Does the drive perform better on a different system? Alternatively, can you try some other USB 2.0 device on the same port where the thumb drive seems to run slow?

Oh and I'd recommend against installing chipset drivers repeatedly. Welcome to AnandTech Forums.

 

[jeffjones]

Thank you guys VERY much for the replies. You put my mind at ease

p.s. it also explains why, when I tried every port on the back (and 2 in the front) that I got the same 5 to 6 MB rate.

again, many thanks