USB 3.0 PCIe card question [SOLVED]

[ubuysa]

Hardware is not my forte, as you know, hence this question.

I have an Asus Z170-E motherboard which has two USB3.0 Gen1 Type-A ports on the board. I also had PCS install an additional PCIe card with two USB3.0 Gen1 Type-A ports.

Since I've had the PC my 3TB external HDD (USB3.0) has been plugged in to one of the PCIe USB3.0 ports and for reasons I won't bore you with I wanted to move it to one of the motherboard USB3.0 ports. Before moving I benchmarked the drive (with Atto) and got a maximum read speed of 74.96MB/s, that I think puts it clearly into USB3.0 territory, I would not expect those speeds if it were using USB2.0 protocols? After moving the drive to an on-board USB3.0 port I got a maximum read speed of 119.07MB/s which is about 62% faster.

Is this speed difference expected behaviour of an on-board USB3.0 port compared to a PCIe USB3.0 port or do I have an issue with my PCIe card??

 

[ubuysa]

I've solved my issue and, as you might have predicted, it was a driver issue. I'm posting this because it demonstrates that Windows Update does not always find the best drivers in Windows 10.

The two type A ports on the PCS supplied and installed USB 3.0 card run only at USB 2.0 speeds via a Windows driver. I'm assuming this is internal to Windows since Windows Update has installed no USB drivers. The maximum read speed I see with this driver is 74.96MB/s....

By using the VEN and DEV identifiers (VEN1B6F and DEV7023) I found that it was an Etron Technologies device and on their website is a driver for these VSN and DEV identifiers. Once I'd installed that the ports run at USB 3.0 speeds. The maximum read speed I see with this driver is 129.68MB/s, a very considerable difference!

The lesson here is that with USB 3.0 ports especially it's always worth checking to see whether the device vendor has a driver, if they do install it in preference to the Windows driver.

Out of interest, I did also buy a USB 3.1 type C cable for the external drive to use the on-board type C port. The benchmarks for the same drive using that port are very impressive....!