this is a post out of curiosity. i have onboard USB and a PCI USB card. is there a difference in performance between the two? is it better to use one over the other?

kind of hoping to learn some computer theory along the way.

cheers,
bg04

I'm sure that in the entire technical scheme of things, there's a difference. However, I've had a pci usb card installed and then removed it (only to whish I left it installed). When I had things running from the pci over the usb off the motherboard, I didn't notice any difference in speed or performance. As for wich is better, well, based on my experience, I can't say one way or the other wich is better, as I saw no difference between the two.

There's some good reading on it HERE from Wikipedia.

Hope this helps at least a little bit!

Adding a PCI card will always add something more to the communication and so reduce the bandwidth and increase latency. However, I believe the performance differences between different USB controllers will mask any performance difference between onboard and PCI USB.

If your onboard USB ports are USB 1.0/1.1 and the PCI USB card is USB 2.0 there will be a vast improvement in transfer speed for USB 2.0 devices.