Question Asus P9X79 Pro USB 3.0 ports not full speed

[SuperChuchu]

I have a P9X79 Pro motherboard in my secondary PC. This is a PC I built in 2012 and upgraded over the years with different components. It’s still a fast PC and the things it cannot do because of the old CPU, such as encoding HEVC, are done by the RTX3060 card in it.

Now, the motherboard has 4 USB 3.0 ports in the back. I know that USB 3.0 speeds can be up to around 500 MBps, so I figured I would get an external SSD for it, even if the SSD is faster than 500 MBps, still a decent speed. So I got a 2 TB Crucial X9 drive, which I tested in my Mac Studio and it benchmarked close to 900 MBps, so I assumed when connected to my PC that it would benchmark at close to 500 MBps.

To my surprise, it wouldn’t go over 230 MBps or so. I think it was formatted as exFAT, so I formatted it as NTFS just to try, and it was slower, not too much, but slower nonetheless. So I went back to exFAT, which at least allows me to connect it to both Mac and PC.

I tried all the USB 3 ports in my PC, and it wasn’t going over 230 MBps. Yesterday it occurred to me that I hadn’t installed the actual Asus drivers for the motherboard, so I did that, not just the USB ones but the ones that were showing for Windows 10 64 bit. That took care of some components in the device manager that were showing as absent. After rebooting and running CrystalDisk Mark again, not only the speed didn’t improve, now they are down to slghtly over hard drive levels, at 174 MBps. So rather pathetic.

Searching online I did everything I found for troubleshooting, including changing the policy from Quick removal to Better performance, which achieved nothing. Now it doesn’t even let me change it back if I wanted to.

Now, I’m fully aware that this is a 12 year old motherboard, so I’m not asking for anything it wasn’t supposed to have when I bought it in 2012. I’m not asking for USB 3.1 or 3.2. I’m expecting USB 3.0 speeds, and that’s supposed to be 500 MBps. So what’s wrong here?

 

[rgd1101]

they are 3.0/2.0 from a 3rd party ASMedia chipset

did you install the asmedia driver?

 

[SuperChuchu]

they are 3.0/2.0 from a 3rd party ASMedia chipset

did you install the asmedia driver?

Yes, in fact, when searching for the drivers in the Asus support section, the USB driver shows as this:

Asmedia_USB3_V1.16.35.1
Version 1.16.35.1
11.28 MB
2016/08/02

That's an old driver, but it's the newest one. And you would think that installing the correct drivers would actually improve the speed, but it cut off about 100 MBps from the Windows 10 drivers, so I'm at a loss.

 

[Bob.B]

I have a P9X79 Pro motherboard in my secondary PC. This is a PC I built in 2012 and upgraded over the years with different components. It’s still a fast PC and the things it cannot do because of the old CPU, such as encoding HEVC, are done by the RTX3060 card in it.

Now, the motherboard has 4 USB 3.0 ports in the back. I know that USB 3.0 speeds can be up to around 500 MBps, so I figured I would get an external SSD for it, even if the SSD is faster than 500 MBps, still a decent speed. So I got a 2 TB Crucial X9 drive, which I tested in my Mac Studio and it benchmarked close to 900 MBps, so I assumed when connected to my PC that it would benchmark at close to 500 MBps.

To my surprise, it wouldn’t go over 230 MBps or so. I think it was formatted as exFAT, so I formatted it as NTFS just to try, and it was slower, not too much, but slower nonetheless. So I went back to exFAT, which at least allows me to connect it to both Mac and PC.

I tried all the USB 3 ports in my PC, and it wasn’t going over 230 MBps. Yesterday it occurred to me that I hadn’t installed the actual Asus drivers for the motherboard, so I did that, not just the USB ones but the ones that were showing for Windows 10 64 bit. That took care of some components in the device manager that were showing as absent. After rebooting and running CrystalDisk Mark again, not only the speed didn’t improve, now they are down to slghtly over hard drive levels, at 174 MBps. So rather pathetic.

Searching online I did everything I found for troubleshooting, including changing the policy from Quick removal to Better performance, which achieved nothing. Now it doesn’t even let me change it back if I wanted to.

Now, I’m fully aware that this is a 12 year old motherboard, so I’m not asking for anything it wasn’t supposed to have when I bought it in 2012. I’m not asking for USB 3.1 or 3.2. I’m expecting USB 3.0 speeds, and that’s supposed to be 500 MBps. So what’s wrong here?

Using any adapters to connect to the pc?

 

[SuperChuchu]

Using any adapters to connect to the pc?

Just a plain USB A to USB C cable, 3.0, in fact I connected the SSD to my Mac Studio with the same cable, to one of the Mac's USB A ports just to be accurate in the comparison. In the Mac version of CrystalMark, called AmorphousDiskMark, it benchmarks close to 900 MBps, although that goes down as the drive gets more full.

The drive itself only comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, but I have a bunch of Samsung SSDs that come with both, so I used one of those, and then tried others just to be safe. Same story.

The manual says in the specs that it has:

ASMedia USB 3.0 controllers
- 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports at mid-board for front panel support
- 4 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports at back panel with 1 x additional VIA
SuperSpeed USB hub controller (blue)

Now, I would like to find out more about this "SuperSpeed USB hub controller", except that the manual only mentions it once, in the specs I pasted here. The Device Manager shows the ASMedia USB Root Hubs and the ASMedia USB 3.0 eXtensible (sic) Host Controllers, then a "Generic Superspeed USB Hub".

The only option for it is to disable power management, nothing else.

 

[Bob.B]

Just a plain USB A to USB C cable, 3.0, in fact I connected the SSD to my Mac Studio with the same cable, to one of the Mac's USB A ports just to be accurate in the comparison. In the Mac version of CrystalMark, called AmorphousDiskMark, it benchmarks close to 900 MBps, although that goes down as the drive gets more full.

The drive itself only comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, but I have a bunch of Samsung SSDs that come with both, so I used one of those, and then tried others just to be safe. Same story.

The manual says in the specs that it has:

ASMedia USB 3.0 controllers
- 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports at mid-board for front panel support
- 4 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports at back panel with 1 x additional VIA
SuperSpeed USB hub controller (blue)

Now, I would like to find out more about this "SuperSpeed USB hub controller", except that the manual only mentions it once, in the specs I pasted here. The Device Manager shows the ASMedia USB Root Hubs and the ASMedia USB 3.0 eXtensible (sic) Host Controllers, then a "Generic Superspeed USB Hub".

The only option for it is to disable power management, nothing else.

What does 'crystal disk info' show for this disk?

 

[SuperChuchu]

What does 'crystal disk info' show for this disk?

Like i mentioned in the first post, it was showing around 230 MBps with the Windows 10 drivers, and when I downloaded the Asus drivers, it went down to around 170 MBps.

However, yesterday I did some "experiments" and was able to raise that to 364.46 MBps. I remember that back when I built this PC, the motherboard had the usual set of apps that came with it, in this case called AII Suite, and among the few ones that were useful, there was one called USB 3.0 Boost. I can't remember if it actually boosted anything back then because at best I had one external USB 3.0 hard drive that topped at 120 MBps, and having an external SSD seemed like a distant future.

However, when you search for drivers for this motherboard and select Windows 10 64 bit, the AII Suite is gone, but if you select Windows 8.1 64 bit, then it's all there.

Since the PC is my secondary machine and if it gets messed up I can just reinstall Windows and programs while I work on my Mac, I said screw it, and I installed the Suite, but only the USB 3.0 booster. Then rebooted, launched the booster, selected the Crucial SSD, set it to Turbo, rebooted, launched CrystalDiskMark, and was fascinated to see that my speed now was 367 and thereabouts. Still, way below the 480 MBps that the manual specs promise, so very disappointed in Asus. I guess my next PC build will be with another brand.

But at least it's a clear speed bump. I doubt that I will be able to get it to 480 MBps, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm happy to try.

 

[BFG-9000]

P9X79 Pro uses Asmedia ASM1051 chip to supply the USB 3.0 ports, and while technically ASM1051 supports UASP mode for faster data transfer, that is specifically blacklisted in the Linux kernel due to known chip bugs so falls back to BOTS mode:

-/* Most ASM1051 based devices have issues with uas, blacklist them all */
-/* Reported-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@xxxxxxxxxx> */
-UNUSUAL_DEV(0x174c, 0x5106, 0x0000, 0x9999,
-        "ASMedia",
-        "ASM1051",
-        USB_SC_DEVICE, USB_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
-        US_FL_IGNORE_UAS),
-

So while older drivers and utilities to force faster operation may indeed provide better performance, the data corruption risk from what is now known as errata and improper hardware implementation is why the newer drivers are generally slower.

I suggest a nice PCIe USB3.2 add-in card with a better controller. The minus of this of course is you can't boot from a drive attached to it.

 

[SuperChuchu]

P9X79 Pro uses Asmedia ASM1051 chip to supply the USB 3.0 ports, and while technically ASM1051 supports UASP mode for faster data transfer, that is specifically blacklisted in the Linux kernel due to known chip bugs so falls back to BOTS mode:

-/* Most ASM1051 based devices have issues with uas, blacklist them all */
-/* Reported-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@xxxxxxxxxx> */
-UNUSUAL_DEV(0x174c, 0x5106, 0x0000, 0x9999,
-        "ASMedia",
-        "ASM1051",
-        USB_SC_DEVICE, USB_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
-        US_FL_IGNORE_UAS),
-

So while older drivers and utilities to force faster operation may indeed provide better performance, the data corruption risk from what is now known as errata and improper hardware implementation is why the newer drivers are generally slower.

I suggest a nice PCIe USB3.2 add-in card with a better controller. The minus of this of course is you can't boot from a drive attached to it.

So let me get this straight. Asus produced (through its child company ASMedia) a chip that they knew was buggy. But they wanted to put USB 3.0 Superspeed to have another marketing tool to sell their boards, and they assumed that probably it wasn't going to turn into a corporate nightmare for them because when these boards were released hardly anyone had a drive of any kind that would go over 130 MBps tops, and those were decent consumer external hard drives.

And basically, if I keep using the "Turbo" mode would be like me trying to drive a supercar, eventually I would end up splattered all over the pavement because it would spin out of control. Eventually the files in that drive would get corrupted.

Great job, Asus!! I'm going to be happy to give my money to another company next time I build a PC for myself or someone else.

 

[rgd1101]

you do know the motherboard is ancient

 

[SuperChuchu]

you do know the motherboard is ancient

Well, 12 years old is not ancient. But the point is, the USB 3.0 spec says that data transfer speed is up to 500 MBps, and this motherboard has 4 USB 3.0 ports, therefore, I should be able to get at least very close to that speed on a drive that I know without a doubt to have close to 1000 MBps.

So I don't give a damn how "ancient" it is, Asus sold me a motherboard that was supposed to have one speed, but in reality it is 1/3 of that, give or take.

On the same PC I put an i7 3930k CPU. That CPU was always 3.2 Ghz with Turbo Boost up to 4 Ghz per logical core. Those were the speeds in 2012 when I bought it, and those are the speeds today. Intel didn't sell me a CPU that works fine at 3.2 Ghz but when it goes into Turbo mode it crashes. I punished that CPU since the day I built the machine with various 3D and video rendering tasks, and it always performed the way Intel promised, all cores going up to 4 Ghz when the task at hand demanded it.

This is not the first Asus disappoints me, but it will be the last because I won't give them the chance to.

 

[SuperChuchu]

Wait, I just remembered USB 2.0 was 480 MBps, USB 3.0 was much higher than that, so this SSD should be as fast as it is on my Mac. Which makes Asus suck even more.

 

[SuperChuchu]

Wait, I just remembered USB 2.0 was 480 MBps, USB 3.0 was much higher than that, so this SSD should be as fast as it is on my Mac. Which makes Asus suck even more.

Nevermind, it was bits not bytes. Thanks to the morons in the industry that couldn't stay with either bits or bytes, but said "Let's confuse the living crap out of everyone!!"

 

[BFG-9000]

Honestly the main alternate USB 3.0 controller ASUS could've chosen instead back then was NEC μPD720200, which had its own performance problems in early revisions (that's now Renesas). These were draft-USB 3.0 devices made before the final spec was ratified in 2010 so it's kind of unreasonable to expect full performance from them today.

This is why it was such a big deal for Intel to integrate native USB 3.0 into their 7-series PCH for Ivy-Bridge back in 2012--performance was great. Whereas AMD had to continue with poor Asmedia USB 3.0 implementations for many years, since Asmedia also makes their chipsets all the way up to AM5 ones today. Asmedia USB did eventually get much better.

X79 was the Sandy-Bridge-E enthusiast platform and while inserting an Ivy-Bridge-E chip into it gives you PCIe 3.0, it cannot give you the USB 3.0 Intel gave to regular Ivy-Bridge chips in B75, Q75, Z75, H77, Q77 or Z77 chipsets a year later. Consider it part of the early-adopter tax.

 

[SuperChuchu]

Honestly the main alternate USB 3.0 controller ASUS could've chosen instead back then was NEC μPD720200, which had its own performance problems in early revisions (that's now Renesas). These were draft-USB 3.0 devices made before the final spec was ratified in 2010 so it's kind of unreasonable to expect full performance from them today.

This is why it was such a big deal for Intel to integrate native USB 3.0 into their 7-series PCH for Ivy-Bridge back in 2012--performance was great. Whereas AMD had to continue with poor Asmedia USB 3.0 implementations for many years, since Asmedia also makes their chipsets all the way up to AM5 ones today. Asmedia USB did eventually get much better.

X79 was the Sandy-Bridge-E enthusiast platform and while inserting an Ivy-Bridge-E chip into it gives you PCIe 3.0, it cannot give you the USB 3.0 Intel gave to regular Ivy-Bridge chips in B75, Q75, Z75, H77, Q77 or Z77 chipsets a year later. Consider it part of the early-adopter tax.

This is a cool bit of history, but to me it all comes down to false advertising. Don't sell me something that promises one thing and grossly under-delivers. Like Samsung with their 2016 (and perhaps later years, I'm not sure) TV sets that promised HDR with amazing picture quality and much higher contrast, but instead gave you panels that didn't switch to Rec.2020 when they got said color signal from a 4K Blu-ray, instead displaying a flat, boring picture with washed out colors where reds were orange.

There shouldn't be such a thing as "early adopter tax". Devices of all kinds should perform as promised, period. That they will get better with time, that's a given. But if you sell me a motherboard that on the box says USB 3.0, I expect the ports to reach those speeds, not 1/3 of it.

 

[USAFRet]

Don't sell me something that promises one thing and grossly under-delivers.

That is the entire premise of the whole advertising industry, in the history of forever.

All of it.

 

[BFG-9000]

Enough people last year bought draft-Wifi 7 devices that the market was estimated to have been 1 billion dollars that year.

Wifi 7 still hasn't been ratified yet, but how many people who shelled out $800 for the latest draft-Wifi 7 BE30000 routers do you think will still have it and be happy with their purchase in a dozen years? Early adopters tend to upgrade frequently. I mean it's obvious the theoretical combined 30,000Mbps isn't even possible (there's no 30Gbps port either) and yet people still line up to buy because marketing says it's the best. Advertising works

Many early adopters of K56 Flex and X2 hardware modems got stuck with V.34 28.8-33.6kbps speeds when it turned out no software update to the final 56k V.92 standard was possible.

The key misleading weasel phrase is performance "up to" and everything is sold that way. HDD have always been sold on their interface speed when only their tiny RAM cache can actually move that fast. Back in 2003 when gigabit ethernet was new, ~300Mbps was about as fast as cards could go... because the Pentium 4 feeding it could only move data that fast at 100% CPU load. Tube TVs and monitors always listed the tube size not the viewable area. Of course there are examples that are so egregious that legislation eventually prohibited them in some countries, but otherwise it's the Wild West out there.

 

[SuperChuchu]

Well, I ended up buying a super cheap USB 3.2 card with 3 USB-C and 2 USB-A ports. So within the PC, the speed got a lot better, going up to over 400 MB/s.

Still not the same speed as my Mac Studio for the same SSD, or even the speed I get with the internal SSD connected to a SATA 6 port, but at least it's decent. I assume that if I were to spend more money on a decent USB 3.2 card I would get better speeds. This one is so cheap that the front plate is like 4º off from the circuit board