USB Bandwith

[USPatriot8320]

Does anyone know how to increase the bandwith for the USB ports? I'm running an external sound card for my surround sound and I can't run anything else while it's hooked up....

[DoctorDoom]

Are you using USB 1.1 or USB 2.0? 1.1 has a max transfer rate of 12 Mbps (megabits/second), where as 2.0 maxes at 480 Mbps (40x faster). In terms of bytes, that's 1.5 megabytes/second vs 60 megabytes/second.

On a USB 1.1 port, a surround-sound system could easily bog it down to where nothing else works very well, if at all. If you're using a hub connected to a single port on the computer, the sound card won't leave much bandwidth for other uses.

If the box has more than one port, dedicate the sound to one of them and use another port for other connections. It might help.

The ideal solution is 2.0 ports.

[USPatriot8320]

I have absolutely no idea what that is, I have 2 USB ports.. I checked it once and it was using about 70% of the bandwith....

[USPatriot8320]

I can tell you what the sound card is maybe that will help: Creative Sound Blaster made for 5.1 surround sound with optical cable....

[DoctorDoom]

Most likely, it's a USB 1.1 port. 2.0 wouldn't even break a sweat with that load. And there's no way to broaden the bandwidth of USB 1.1, which is why 2.0 and Firewire are the ports of choice.

[USPatriot8320]

Ok, thanks again Doc :-)

[USPatriot8320]

BTW: Hey doc, wanna buy a laptop :-p LOL

[DoctorDoom]

This might be of interest if your laptop has a PCMCIA CardBus slot. It adds two USB 2.0 ports.

Belkin Components 2-Port USB 2.0 Cardbus (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006BBAQ/ref=pd_sxp_elt_l1/103-9612785-2228639?n=172282)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00006BBAQ.01-A1AJVWO2HMT2XY._SCLZZZZZZZ_.gif

$50 is cheaper than a new laptop.

[USPatriot8320]

Does that plug into the same slot as the wireless card???

[DoctorDoom]

Most likely. It will be an either/or thing. OTOH, there are USB wireless adapters for 802.11, so you could have both.

[USPatriot8320]

Thx again Doc, you've helped me out a lot in fixin these damn comp. problems....