USB 3.0 working at USB 2.0

Hi guys. I have a new Alienware 14. As I understand it, all 3 of its usb ports are "Superspeed USB 3.0." However, my ports are only operating at USB 2.0 "high speed." Alien Autopsy even reports that the USB version and speed are both 2.0 high speed. I have already uninstalled the old intel usb 3.0 extensible driver and installed the newest one as per this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...14-17-18-usb-2-0-3-0-devices-not-working.html to no avail. I have tried 2 different usb 3.0 flash drives (a PNY usb3.0 drive, and a sandisk ultra usb 3.0) and both transfer at a maximum of 20mb/s, which is definitely in the realm of USB 2.0. Do anyone else's usb ports actually work as usb 3.0?

BTW, going to alienautopsy and hitting system info and clicking usb devices will show what the usb hubs are running at.

 

Interesting.. I don't have any USB3.0 devices to test with, but AlienAutopsy is showing the same thing for me. I too installed the latest USB3 Extensible drivers from Intel after doing a clean install on my SSD.

 

May I have your full system specs?

 

I have a external USB 3.0 hard drive, and It reach speed easily at 30/40 mbps, with usb 2.0 I barely can reach 20 if the laptop was in good mood , where in alien autopsy see this¡

 

So I feel stupid. In my defense though, I was really unlucky with usb 3.0 flash drives it seems. Digging through manufacturer websites, it looks like the drives I had bought from Best Buy were only rated to transfer at ~20mb/s despite being usb 3.0 (that is some dirty marketing, I mean what's the point of a usb 3.0 connection if max transfer is within usb 2.0 spec). I was also a bit stupid as I didn't realize the drives weren't going in all the way (my ports are pretty tight). Apparently the extra usb 3.0 pins are behind the usb 2.0 pins, so not putting a usb 3.0 drive in all the way will cause it to run at usb 2.0 and windows will throw an error stating that the device can run faster when connected to a usb 3.0 superspeed port (which lead me to initially believe something was wrong).

I'm not sure why device manager and autopsy reports the generic usb hubs as 2.0, but the other laptops at best buy did the same. I think it's just a driver thing. You can, however, make sure that devices are connecting via usb 3.0 by going into device manager, clicking view by connection, and searching for your device under the usb 3.0 extensible heading. Testing with a 3rd usb 3.0 drive rated at 80mb/s, I am in fact getting ~75mb/s reads (higher than the 60mb/s theoretical limit of usb 2.0). Although, this drive only writes at a pathetic 8mb/s. I don't know about everyone else, but marketing for these things seem very sleazy...the drive wasn't cheap either...

@jacker60: if you open autopsy and go to system specs, you can check under the usb heading. However, like I mentioned, I think the generic usb hubs always report as 2.0 as they run the microsoft driver. USB 3.0 connections are made via intel's controller.

I hope I explained all that well and I didn't come off too silly lol XD