yeah yeah, the cake is a lie...

 

First off the table shows only somewhat summed up score.
Internal latency of most USB audio interfaces is usually 1 to 1.6ms, the rest is for the driver to handle. Good 2/2 USB card should not require driver at all - running straight from UAC1 driver all major OSes happen to have built-in. Unfortunately, I've yet to find such card.
As for FW/PCI/PCIe cards, those might have slightly better latency, but ultimately, when CPU adds another 5-8ms for processing, I won't be concerned with 1.6ms difference that'd show on hardware.
As long as supplied driver doesn't cripple performance (happens very often), most cards should perform comparably well.

 

in this case yeah it is, these numbers are prolly just taken from what the manufacturers claim, it wont take into account what your own system adds and what buffer settings they have. currently mine is set to 256, asio driver says it's 6ms, fl studio says it's 17ms and the device output moniter says 11.2 ms, so yeah i wouldnt trust a chart that doesnt take my personal settings into account

 

It's the most complete list out there nevertheless and gives a pretty good overview. And if one would like to dig deeper, one could always visit dawbench.com (referenced in the chart title)
I use a really old m-audio conectiv audio 4 i/o interface - with mme/direct x drivers I get ~90 ms latency, with the m-audio asio drivers I get 8 ms.
So yeah, maybe dedicated drivers (I think that's what you mean with "no drivers at all" - you cannot possibly mean really no drivers at all!?!?) should be not needed. In reality though, they are very much needed.

edit: ok, since some people are too lazy to look for themselves: here is how this chart was done:

http://www.dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency3.htm

 

For what exactly?
UAC1 class compliant support includes 4-channel 48/24, or 2-channel duplex, should be enough for something like Emu 0202 or Scarlett 2i2, but both rely on proprietary drivers, which are OS limited and not always stable.
UAC ensures the best stability for each OS, as the driver is part of OS itself.
UAC2 further support 384/32 2-channel duplex, but Windows has yet to add UAC2 support.

To access the device, WASAPI can be used, or ASIO4ALL, or JACK/ALSA.

 

It is a great chart, Fraikikmushi, though by now after all these years is getting a bit long in the teeth and it would be a real bonus if some generous soul would update it to reflect current manufacturers and or models. There is still some important benchmark information, though.

 

But that's not fault of internal driver and rather unfair comparison, also considering MME driver for that card is also supplied by M-Audio

MME/DirectSound is supposed to have latency, to compensate for variety of factors in decoding multiple streams across PCs of various performance.
WASAPI and ASIO are built for lower latency. Maybe compare performance through ASIO4ALL vs. proprietary M-Audio ASIO driver.

Good comparison would be RME Babyface with its own driver vs. ODAC with UAC1 through ASIO4ALL. I'm quite sure both will be very close in terms of output latency.

 

Fair enough!
ASIO4All: 14 ms, proprietary: 8 ms.
Good thing I don't do live stuff

 

That's the point!
If you're playing live, MIDI and Audio latency will add up.
Most modern MIDI interfaces are below 10ms, but there might be exceptions.
Unfortunately there are not many MIDI latency charts out there
This thread has a little bit of info...

 

Ok, skipping all the BS.... Your question on latency can be answered with an upgrade. There are workarounds, but your main objective should be a total upgrade. Your problem with latency is the amount of RAM your computer is providing. While an external soundcard could greatly improve this performance by taking the weight of audio conversion off of the CPU, you're still having instances of heavy RAM using vsts (Kontakt). If you want better latency, use better gear. Get rid of the 6 year old laptop, get one with a multiple core CPU, and a good amount of RAM. These problems you're having will vanish.

 

yeah because 6 years ago there was no way we could use kontakt or other 'heavy' vsts.....