I'm one of the people suffering from the AMD USB driver lags. Occasionally I get small crackles which apparently has to do with the mainboard's AGESA drivers. MSI did some updates and it got better but that took years already and it's still an issue, with loads of people online reporting these problems.

Anyways. I was told that I could get a PCIe USB card and that would fix the problem. Is it true that when using these it's different USB drivers then the onboard USB? Do I need USB 2 or 3? All audio devices and controllers still use USB2 afaik but do I have any disadvantage from getting USB3? Also, should I get a high quality one (expensive) or is a standard card enough (20€)?

Thanks for your help

 

it can have different USB chipset (Intel, ASMedia etc..) therefore different driver, and depending on its design it can have higher power delivery,
I'd rather get PCIe audio interface than trouble with mediocre USB cards (audio or host bus cards)

 

i didn't even realize there was such a thing until now. it's not a surprise but I just never looked. I'm going to try and find a supported one I can stick into my Mac.

I would always get the usb 3 unless you know you need a 2 for some specific reason.

google: Does USB go through PCIe?

USB 3 and PCIe use different protocols above the physical layer, the controller and software involved are entirely different. It's not possible to speak USB over PCIe, unless you've implemented a real USB 3 controller (Or unless we're talking about USB 4, with Thunderbolt-like PCIe tunneling support).

 

I'm afraid - and this might be a language barrier - I don't get whether that's good or bad. I understand that USB over PCIe doesn't use the same drivers so I'm not affected by shitty msi drivers this way?

 

you asked if it is a different driver. The card you buy should come with it's own driver to use. It is a card you install, so it is basically going direct to the mobo, but with a data conversion. Will this improve your situation? I don't know. This is the first I have read about them.

As to the issue of expensive vs inexpensive cards; you are trying to improve glitches by doing this? For my use, I would only be using it to connect midi devices, which is nothing. For audio, you should definitely compare a few of them. Read the technical specs of each one and compare them.

 

Last edited: Nov 18, 2023

I had some problems by connecting my usb soundcard (RME 802) via a pcie card, but then I figured out that when using the usb plug on the motherboard those issues were gone. Simply check if the usb port you're using is directly connected to the cpu rather than the chipset. You can figure it out using the program called USB Tree viewer, and it tells you which port is connected to what in your system.

https://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html

 

thanks. According to the USB Tree viewer all my ports are connected to one of three "AMD USB 3.10 eXtensible-Hostcontroller – 1.10 (Microsoft)". The tree is same for all ports. All of them are on a "USB-Root-Hub (USB 3.0)".

I already tried all ports and everything. It's the same problem on all of them.

 

I have used both cheap and expensive pcie cards, they're fine overall. The biggest issue with the are the mic ports that are a lot more susceptible to electromagnetic interference, especially during GPU heavy tasks. I personally believe the featureset in pcie cards is severely lacking, and driver support is a lot more finicky depending on the brand.

As for the agesa issue in AMD motherboards, I'm well aware of that since I only had it once after switching to AMD, and it fortunately was fixed by Asus shortly after. Have you made sure to update both BIOS and Chipset drivers from AMD? Also, if you're on the Ryzen 3000 series, maybe upgrading to a 5000 is a cheaper option than getting a new interface?

 

There are brackets that connect to your mainbaord USB controller:


And there are cards with their own USB controller:


As long as there are available headers on the mainboard, you usually want the first option (it's cheaper and the less different controllers and other devices in the system the better). But if there are problems with the integrated controller and you want to user another one, you're looking for the second option. Note that in some cases additional cabling is required, like a SATA power connector on the picture above.

 

I still use the good old PCI slot, I have 2 of these, and two identical motherboards in spare

 

If I understood right the OP question this is the answer. It's a common thing to do, although normally is to add features to a old mainboard. But If you can't solve your driver issues go for it.

I myself had a very old mainboard (USB2, SATA2) until a couple years. I bought a quite cheap PCI-E card adapter like the second. Gave me one SATA3 connector for my new SSD and two USB3 ports. Worked like a charm, could boot from the SATA3 card port without problems.

It's true they're different data protocols. But as long as the mainboard one (PCI-E) is widely faster than the card (USB3) a simple card can do the trick.

 

What exactly is it that you're needing to do with the USB? Are you needing it to connect an external interface of some sort? If all you really need is to do is monitor and simple (one or two i/o) record/play AD/DA I would suggest a RME PCIe card. If you needed to get multiple channels of digital audio to/from an external interface of some kind, using ADAT or TOSlink for that communication is your best bet over USB, which can also be done with that same card. Most all RME buss cards have TOSlink onboard. Unless your external interface is a RME USB device in which case you already have the best possible USB audio device. In that case if the main board is somehow USB deficient, it might be time to think about a new main system board. Much cheaper than most quality audio products... I would not ever mess with cheap audio interfaces of any kind. I can recommend RME because all my audio stuff is RME. Not the cheapest gear in the world but the best bang for your audio $. And their hardware/USB drivers are rock solid.

 

Last edited: Nov 18, 2023