USB 2.0 card...PCI or PCI-e x1

[bobarotti]

Hi there, I have the following system. I am considering putting in an internal USB 2.0 Card. My question is should I use a PCI card or a PCI-e x1 card? Does the ACTUAL throughput of USB 2.0 warrant the use of PCI-e x1 or will the slower PCI "do"? Thanks.

Windows 7 64 bit
2.70 gigahertz AMD Athlon 7750 Dual-Core
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
8 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. M3N78-VM Rev X.0x
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 0907 01/13/2009

160.04 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
130.51 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HP DVD Writer 1040r [CD-ROM drive]
LITE-ON DVDRW SHM-165P6S [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

WDC WD1600AAJS-22PSA0 [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 0, SMART Status: Healthy

3968 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 2048 MB
Slot 'DIMM1' has 2048 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM3' is Empty

 

[Lmeow]

IIRC, the max transfer speed of USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps, which roughly translate to 60 Mb/s. The max speed of a PCI slot is 132 Mb/s, and thus a PCI USB 2.0 card should work without any bandwidth issues. PCI-e 1x provides 1000 Mb/s max, which would be far more useful as a sound card or some other PCI-e peripheral.

 

[das_stig]

Unless you go USB3, which is USB2 compatible and would be better off as an PCI-E as it will saturate PCI bus.

 

[canadian69]

Real world throughput on USB 2.0 devices comes nowhere near thier theoretical maximums, so short simple answer is no, it doesn't matter.

 

[bobarotti]

Thanks to all. I suspected as much but haven't found a use for my PCI-e x1 card slot yet so wanted to make sure before I purchased. I will go with the PCI and let the chips fall where they may. Thanks again

 

[bobarotti]

Best answer selected by bobarotti.