P4T533 and USB 2.0

[I.P. Daly]

Hi folks. Could someone please advise if they have any problems
getting USB 2.0 to work at high speed with the P4T533 (not the -C
version) motherboard? I have tried everything and cannot get proper
throughput. A friend copies a file on his Intel mobo-based computer in
4 seconds. The same file on my machine takes more than 30 seconds!
We've tried everything, even installing a USB 2.0 PCI card, but
nothing helps.

In addition to the slow speed, I also have a problem with lengthy
reads and writes in that, more often then not, the drive stops
responding and just disappears from the system, almost as if it "times
out".

The OS is W2K sp4. Device Manager shows a USB 2.0 Root Hub and
everything says it's working okay.

Is there any way to completely disable USB on this motherboard? We
thought we did that when installing the PCI card, but it was still
operational.

While looking through this newsgroup it seems many Asus motherboard
models have USB 2.0 issues. Does Asus have a problem with implementing
USB 2.0 in general?

Thanks for any and all help.

 

[Paul]

Hi folks. Could someone please advise if they have any problems
getting USB 2.0 to work at high speed with the P4T533 (not the -C
version) motherboard? I have tried everything and cannot get proper
throughput. A friend copies a file on his Intel mobo-based computer in
4 seconds. The same file on my machine takes more than 30 seconds!
We've tried everything, even installing a USB 2.0 PCI card, but
nothing helps.

In addition to the slow speed, I also have a problem with lengthy
reads and writes in that, more often then not, the drive stops
responding and just disappears from the system, almost as if it "times
out".

The OS is W2K sp4. Device Manager shows a USB 2.0 Root Hub and
everything says it's working okay.

Is there any way to completely disable USB on this motherboard? We
thought we did that when installing the PCI card, but it was still
operational.

While looking through this newsgroup it seems many Asus motherboard
models have USB 2.0 issues. Does Asus have a problem with implementing
USB 2.0 in general?

Thanks for any and all help.

I don't really have much to add since your last posting in March. I
see in Google, that when people plug a third party RAID card into
an ICH2 based PCI bus, they are able to get 86MB/sec transfer rate.
What that tells me, is the ICH2 PCI bus mastering is not busted, so
this is not a DMA limitation. There have been chipsets, like a certain
chip made by AMD, that have low limits like 25MB/sec on 32 bit PCI, but
I see no evidence of that here.

The other side of the coin is IRQs and sharing. USB 2.0 works in terms
of packets of data sent over the USB cable, and there is likely an
interrupt for each packet. It could be that for some reason, there
is high interrupt latency on your system. Setting "Interrupt Mode"
to [APIC], allows more IRQ numbers than with the [PIC] setting, but
that only helps if you have run out of numbers. When pieces of hardware
share the same physical interrupt line, they have to use the same
IRQ number, because the same physical wire is used when the sharing
devices tug on the line.

In terms of the best physical PCI slots to place your USB2.0 card
in, I would try slot 4 or slot 6. According to the manual, those
slots do not share interrupt signals with other hardware. Slot 4 and
slot 6 are the slots further away from the processor - PCI slot 1 is
normally as close as you can get to the processor, while slot 6
is furthest away. (Note: You cannot trust the manual, when
it comes to the "Interrupt Request Table for this Motherboard".
Many manuals are just plain wrong, and perhaps your engineering
friend can examine the system with the USB2 card installed, to
see whether it is sharing with anything. With APIC enabled, the
new USB2 card should get its own private IRQ number.)

There is some mention of interaction between the Promise controller
and USB2 here. To eliminate the NEC USB2 onboard chip, try entering
the Device Manager and disabling the chip there. Then, if an interrupt
is signalled on the line shared by the onboard USB2 chip and the
Promise controller, with USB2 disabled in Device Manager, there is no
reason for the USB2 interrupt handler for the NEC chip to be invoked
at all.

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21768&highlight=p4t533+performance

While I don't expect miracles, trying one of those two slots might
help.

The USB entries, in a sense, are independent of one another. Whether the
USB device is a USB 1.1 in the Southbridge, a USB 2.0 port in the NEC
onboard chip, or a USB 2.0 from a separate PCI card, you should be able
to disable them in Device Manager individually. When Windows enumerates
the hardware, it will try to load a driver for each one. If the
devices are properly disabled in Device Manager, then the driver
should not be used for a disabled entry. I would pull your USB2 PCI card,
enter the Device Manager and disable whatever you don't want, then install
the USB2 PCI card in the best slot, let Windows install drivers for the
new devices, then it is time to run some benchmarks.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Ronald Cole]

Hi folks. Could someone please advise if they have any problems
getting USB 2.0 to work at high speed with the P4T533 (not the -C
version) motherboard? I have tried everything and cannot get proper
throughput. A friend copies a file on his Intel mobo-based computer in
4 seconds. The same file on my machine takes more than 30 seconds!
We've tried everything, even installing a USB 2.0 PCI card, but
nothing helps.

Are you sure you're plugging it into the 2.0 jacks and not the 1.1
jacks?

In addition to the slow speed, I also have a problem with lengthy
reads and writes in that, more often then not, the drive stops
responding and just disappears from the system, almost as if it "times
out".

The OS is W2K sp4. Device Manager shows a USB 2.0 Root Hub and
everything says it's working okay.

The USB 1.1 and 2.0 work as advertised on my P4T533 running WinXP.

 

[I.P. Daly]

Thanks Paul (and Ronald) for all your help with this USB 2.0. As of
this writing the problems still exist, and will probably continue to
do so for a bit longer. My technician friend is suffering from a bad
leg and will be unable to help me until it heals. In the interim, I'll
see what I can do with regard to software and see if anything helps.

I appreciate all your valuable information, and will continue to look
into the problem. If a solution can be found, I'll definitely let you
know!

Thanks!