Which USB2 chips are better for Win98?

[osRe]

What reading speed are you getting with the uPD720101? Only tried on XP so far, but it seems limited to 15-16MB/sec (tried some flash drives and an SATA enclosure), which is unexpectedly low, especially the HDD.

[noguru]

Thanks for the all info. There are more reports of trouble with VIA so I'm going to try to get a NEC 101 (too bad that unknown NEC 10X is more common). The NEC 100 was faster than VT6202 in a review I read, so I assume 101 would be even better, maybe even faster than VT6212.

And I don't think is is the chip alone that is responsible for the performance, there are more electronics on such a little card that matter.

I don't know for sure but my guess would be that unless the card has real electrical issues the only factor would be the chip. There's not much on a USB card more than the controller chip.

Just like the same VIA on-board sound chip actually sounds really different on different motherboards.

Audio usually has an analog part which would need a more careful design.

Sorry for this (very) late reply but it took a while to have a chance to get real proof.

Yes, audio has analogue output. Maybe not the best example. But in the end when your talking about bare metal hardware it always comes down to real electrons going through real copper. That's why your motherboard is not running at the insane speed your CPU does. A signal or output can be digital but it's still made by analogue electronic parts. These parts can make a big difference.

My brother has a €10 Sweex USB2-card with the Via chip. It worked for him with USB-keys and his wireless adapter. I have (well not anymore..) a ICDIU (or something) USB2 card with the same chip that I pay €15 for. Still cheap but a big price difference.

So my brother bought a 1TB external drive and it didn't work. It was in explorer, he could open it and see files on it. But as soon as he tried opening those files the drive just locked. On other systems it was fine (thats how he got files on it). All other hardware in his system was also fine, no things like power or memory problems. So it must be the card thats causing the problem right?

And it was. I swapped that card with my "superior" 15 euro card and his drive worked like there was never a problem at all. A simple look at both cards revealed the simple truth. The sweex card had usb ports and a Via chip on it. Not really more. The other also had a electrolytic capacitor paired with each usb port. Yes, those infamous capacitors known for the destabilizing (or much worse) effect that they can have on hardware when they fail. I didn't recognize the brand so it's probably cheap Chinese or Taiwanese and they might fail in the future. Giving my brother trouble again.

But the Sweex didn't even have any to start with!