Quick question about USB 2.0

[Salvador]

This may seem like a silly question, but I want to make sure that I have this straight. If I were to put a USB 2.0 PCI card in a mobo that is only USB 1.1 compliant, would I only be limited to USB 1.1 or is there some kind of controller on the PCI card that will give me the USB 2.0?

I just want to be sure that I'd be getting the full USB 2.0 speeds in a PCI card even if the mobo is older and is only USB 1.1 compliant.

TIA,

Sal

 

[Hyperfocal]

Shouldn't have any problems. I'm running an adaptec duo connect USB 2.0/firewire in an old Celeron 900 box. It doesn't seem as fast as the USB 2.0 or firewire in my new box, but it is noticably faster than 1.1.

 

[anthrax]

USB 2.0 band width is about 480Mbps which equals about 60MB/s... the PCI has a bandwidth of 133M/Bs.....so USB2.0 would eat up quite lot of the bandwidth of the PCI bus........ Intergrated USB controllers typically do not connect to the rest of the system via PCI..instead, they typically use some prepritory buses...this avoids the PCI bottle neck.........so intergrated controllers are faster than the PCI ones..

It must be noted that PCI , the version which is typically used on Home PCI dates back to the pentium era....

 

[Salvador]

Thanks for the info. It's basically faster than the 1.1, but not as fast as the onboard 2.0 controller and the PCI uses up a lot of PCI bandwidth. Gotcha!

So.. Considering that I have an external dvd burner that has both USB and Firewire, I should probably grab a Firewire card instead of a USB 2.0 PCI card for the machine that only has USB 1.1 onboard.

Thanks.

Sal

 

[poppyq]

I would personally get a card that has both. It won't be much more expensive than a card that does one or the other.