USB Hubs and Devices

[walkerdrive]

I have an Abit IP35 Pro motherboard which has 2 ports that are USB2. When I plug my gaming mouse and my SteelSeries 5HV2 USB sound card which are both USB2 and check under USB Root Hub devices, it shows that they are running in Full Speed and not on the High Speed USB Root Hubs. I thought all 4 USB ports on the back of my computer were USB2 and thus the USB2 devices plugged in those ports will run at High Speed or USB2 speed, but it seems like that's not the case. Can someone help me figure out what's going on and why it's like this. I can post screenshots just tell me what I should snap.

Thanks!

 

[Hopalong X]

Back Panel I/O1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
abit Silent OTES™
1 x S/P DIF In, 1 x S/P DIF Out
2 x eSATA
7.1 CH Audio connector (Front, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Surround, Rear Surround)
4 x USB 2.0
1 x RJ-45 LAN connector
EZ CCMOS Switch


From your Abit moboard web page.
Four standard USB 2.0.
It says nothing about Intel high speed USB 2.0 which is rare.

 

[walkerdrive]

I thought USB 2.0 meant High-Speed while USB 1.0 can work in full-speed and low speed. Correct me if I'm wrong.

And in the device manager, two of the root hubs show up as enhanced and are working in high-speed but there are no devices associated with them. I thought the gaming mouse and USB sound card would be high speed devices since they are USB 2.0 and especially the sound card since it requires quite a bit of bandwidth to work.

 

[alfred01]

Actually, USB 1.0 is just the old 4 prong type of USB connector. As Hopalong says, high-speed USB 2.0 ports are very rare. I'm not to sure what your root hubs showing up as advanced is.

 

[walkerdrive]

Do you mean high-speed "devices" or ports? Because look, here is a screen shot of what I'm talking about:

Even in the BIOS there is an option of whether the USB speed should be "low or full" or "high speed" and I've selected High Speed so the hub/port should be running at high-speed. Now the question is, why aren't my devices running at high speed?

 

[alfred01]

OK I can see what your saying, could you go from where you are in your pic and click on Power Management just to make sure the "allow the computer to turn this off" is unchecked.

 

[walkerdrive]

Yes, I have unchecked all those check boxes for all the USB Root Hubs. The thing is, the devices are not turning off, they are working fine, it's just that I was wondering why they are not running in high-speed mode when it is available to them. The devices would work much faster than they are now that way. I thought there might be a windows setting or something preventing it from working or maybe windows is choosing how the devices are going to work.

Anyway, if someone knows how it all works, let me know... I'm interested to hear it.

Thanks a lot so far!

 

[alphanumeric]

The way I understand it the "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" entry is for the USB controller, the chip that drives the ports. You will never see anything connected to it as it connects to the "Root Hub(s)". Seeing that device under Universal Serial Bus controllers means you have USB 2 support. If you plug a USB 2 capable device into a USB 1 port you will get a "This device could preform faster...." pop up message. If you didn't get that message I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[walkerdrive]

So you are saying the devices are already running at their optimum speeds?

 

[alphanumeric]

Actually, USB 1.0 is just the old 4 prong type of USB connector. As Hopalong says, high-speed USB 2.0 ports are very rare. I'm not to sure what your root hubs showing up as advanced is.

USB 1 and USB 2 devices use the same 4 pin connector, you can't tell one from the other just by looking at them. A USB 1 spec-ed device will plug into and work in a USB 2 port. It just won't work at the full USB 2 speed. Same deal for a USB 2 device pluged into a USB 1 port. USB 2.0 is quit common these days unless you have a really old PC.

 

[alphanumeric]

So you are saying the devices are already running at their optimum speeds?

Yes I believe so.

 

[walkerdrive]

Okay then. If anyone knows more about this issue please speak up, otherwise I'll let it rest.

Thanks for the help!

 

[walkerdrive]

I plugged a USB 2.0 external hard drive (seagate portable) and it was attached to the high-speed USB root hub so I guess it works. I'm just wondering why the sound card doesn't work at high-speed since I'd assume it requires a lot of bandwidth to function properly.

I have one question though. When I plugged in the hard drive and was backing up my data, the average speed was between 19 and 25MB/s. Since USB 2.0 allows for 480Mb/s which is 60MB/s, I was wondering why isn't the transfer speed higher? I'm transferring from a WD Raptor 10K RPM HD which is SATA I. Any ideas?

 

[alphanumeric]

Well I did some more reading and it appears USB 2.0 can be certified as Full speed or High speed and still be called or advertised as USB 2 certified. Same thing with USB devices so now I'm getting confused. Too the OP, I guess you have to read the fine print for your devices specs to see what the fastest USB speed they support is and go from there. It looks like Full speed isn't much better than USB 1.1 speeds. Also the quoted speeds are the theoretical maximum so you aren't likely ever to get 480 Mbs and if you do it will only be for short bursts. I'm not 100% sure on this but I believe the USB ports connect to the hubs in groups of two. If one of the ports has a USB device running at a lower speed it may be that both ports on that hub will run at the lower speed. I've never sat down and tried to prove it but I do group my devices so one won't interfere with the other. My keyboard and mouse for instance are on two adjacent ports. My DVD burner and external drive are on two other adjacent ports, etc.

 

[walkerdrive]

Yeah, with the hard drive I wasn't expecting to get 60MB/s but 20MB/s is pretty bad. That's 1/3 the theoretical speed. I was hoping to get more like 35MB/s+.

 

[alphanumeric]

I've never tested the data transfer speed of my external drive. It's not painfully slow so I just accept that it is what it is. If I did test it, it would probably just depress me to know what the true speed is. Mine is just a spare ATA-100 IDE drive I had kicking around after upgarding to a SATA II drive in my PC.

 

[tw33k]

My USB 2.0 external:

 

[walkerdrive]

You don't have to test it. You can just click on "details" in the file transferring box while you're transferring files and it will show you the current speed.

 

[alphanumeric]

Ah, OK, I'll try to remember that the next time I'm using it.

 

[Phone Man]

Right click on each USB Root Hub, select Properties and under Power it will show what is connected and then click on Advanced and it should show the speed. Full-Speed is 1.1 and High-Speed is 2.0

USB supports the following signaling rates:

• A low-speed rate of 1.5 Mbit/s (~183 kB/s) is defined by USB 1.0. It is very similar to "full-bandwidth" operation except each bit takes 8 times as long to transmit. It is intended primarily to save cost in low-bandwidth human interface devices (HID) such as keyboards, mice, and joysticks.
• The full-speed rate of 12 Mbit/s (~1.43 MB/s) is the basic USB data rate defined by USB 1.1. All USB hubs support full-bandwidth.
• A high-speed (USB 2.0) rate of 480 Mbit/s (~57 MB/s) was introduced in 2001. All hi-speed devices are capable of falling back to full-bandwidth operation if necessary; they are backward compatible. Connectors are identical.
• A SuperSpeed (USB 3.0) rate of 4800 Mbit/s (~572 MB/s). The written USB 3.0 specification was released by Intel and partners in August 2008. The first USB 3 controller chips were sampled by NEC May 2009 [47] and products using the 3.0 specification arrived beginning in January 2010.[48] USB 3.0 connectors are generally backwards compatible, but include new wiring and full duplex operation. There is some incompatibility with older connectors.

Jim