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USB 2.0 performance

gevorg

gevorg

Diamond Member
Assuming you have enough ports and they all USB 2.0, does the performance/speed varies from one USB interface manufacturer to another?

I'm a big user of multiple USB devices, and some of them (like hard drives) are heavy on I/O and transfer speeds. While researching for my next build, I'm wondering if I should pay more attention to motherboards with good USB performance, unless the differences are small and insignificant.

What do you think? Are all USB 2.0 ports have the same I/O, latency, and transfer speeds?
 
USB speeds can vary quite a bit. Some of the better motherboard reviews point this out. Generally speaking, AMD-based motherboards with the SB600/700/750 are slower than their Nvidia & Intel counterparts.
 
USB implementations vary vastly.

In my experience, Intel's ICH10 chipset provides the best USB throughput. With a single 93GB file (steam backup) it will transfer at around 35 MB/sec.

ICH8 and 9 in my netbook and hybrid are slower but not by a whole lot.

AMD chipsets, as with my phenom x3 system that I returned to the store, are SLOW. We're talking between 25-28MB/sec for the same transfer.

My S939 A64 setup isn't even reliable for USB. It has an AMD (ati) northbridge which uses a ULI southbridge. It's even slower still and will cause BSOD no matter the driver used when heavily saturated (win XP) and also gives windows error report suggestions for webcam not functioning correctly as being a USB problem.

The Nforce 4 (a64 X2) system I bought as a replacement for the Phenom X3 (and also returned for a good intel solution) didn't have any reliability issues but its speed was also much slower than the Intel chipsets.


It doesn't matter as much with today's CPUs but, while providing much lower throughput, the non-intel chipsets also use much more CPU. Maybe something to consider when buying a netbook.
 
So the best indicator for good USB performance is the southbridge chip? Anything else matter?
 
Just want to chime in (late) that USB definitely varies. I thought USB was basically unusable based on the operation of my Dell Dimension 4550, which basically locks up when transferring large files between it's internal HDD and a USB 2.0 connected external HDD. Based on other feedback, I connected the same external drive (MyBook Essential 500GB) to the IP35-e PC I built. Night and day. Transfers are quicker and most importantly, that PC doesn't lock up.
 
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