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XHCI (USB 3.0) vs EHCI (USB 2.0) - Motherboard specific or...?

39K views 79 replies 23 participants last post by  ball2hi 
#1 ·
Start out by saying I have a pretty crappy motherboard
http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-Z87X-UD4H-rev-1x#ov
So, I am not sure if this might have something to do with it.

I've been playing FPS games for years, always been pretty decent at them. It wasn't until recently however I acquired my first (crappy) 144hz (IPS) monitor. I am pretty sensitive to things like input lag or anything interfering with my accuracy from muscle memory. I'm pretty adaptable so I am able to switch in/360 quite often if I choose to but I decided to settle on 12in/360. My current active game is Overwatch. I've played a lot of competitive Left4Dead 2 and Natural Selection 2. I tried to get into CS:GO but just couldn't bear how boring the gameplay felt.

However when I started to move away from Left4Dead 2 I noticed something odd in all my other FPS games. I had some serious trouble aiming, and it wasn't because of the different movement mechanics of targets. In games like CS:GO, Overwatch, and Natural Selection 2 it always felt like my mouse was seriously floating. It wasn't a framerate issue, didn't feel like input lag, but just felt like a serious inaccuracy and overall floatiness similar to if you had VSync on except without the input lag.

This has been over years. I've had many different mousepads, mice, CPUs, GPUs, PSUs and operating systems. However the "floatiness" stayed. As someone who has a lot of free time, I use it to troubleshoot and tinker with BIOS and OS settings to see how it affects my gameplay. Though everyone is subject to placebo, I feel I do a pretty good job not having it when I mess around with things.

Long tinkering story short, I enabled/disabled things like HPET in BIOS/OS, XHCI drivers, ect. I noticed that when I had XHCI mode enabled in BIOS and it made a call to Win10 to use my modified XHCI drivers - http://www.win-raid.com/t834f25-USB-Drivers-original-and-modded.html - since the default Win10 XHCI driver is terribly laggy.

With XHCI on my mouse feels incredibly easy to control, not floaty at all. However there are times where it feels like it's delayed slightly, like I expected the crosshair to lock onto a target faster. With XHCI off, my mouse feels hard to control, floaty, almost skipping but doesn't feel like it's delayed.

An image to give an idea of what it feels like


Here is another image over at Blur Busters, but this is moreso 1000hz vs 500hz. Still however, it gives an idea of explaining how my mouse feels on EHCI drivers.


Is there anyone else with experience in this? What's your 2cents on this?
 
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#2 ·
I've been using a usb 3.0 w/ intel chipset driver for over a year and there's no difference between it and my usb 2.0 ports which are all dead/fried

The only different I ever noticed with my rear I/O panel is a usb keyboard versus a ps/2 keyboard - in that any event of system lag the ps/2 keyboard would always register my key presses when the system came back to normal function - also it never misses a key input when you do multiple presses consecutively

But as for a mouse.. zero difference between either port. Some newer systems don't even have usb 2.0 ports anymore
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncck View Post

I've been using a usb 3.0 w/ intel chipset driver for over a year and there's no difference between it and my usb 2.0 ports which are all dead/fried

The only different I ever noticed with my rear I/O panel is a usb keyboard versus a ps/2 keyboard - in that any event of system lag the ps/2 keyboard would always register my key presses when the system came back to normal function - also it never misses a key input when you do multiple presses consecutively

But as for a mouse.. zero difference between either port. Some newer systems don't even have usb 2.0 ports anymore
I don't have different ports. All the ports on my motherboard are USB 3.0 with the option of being downgraded to usb 2.0 through BIOS.
 
#5 ·
Just wanted to say one thing. The cursor is definitely gonna feel floaty in Overwatch because it introduces an insane amount of input lag in comparison to most other games. You have to get something like 400 fps to get below 5ms input latency, at least on my system with my 1080p IPS display, and my PC is not bad by any means.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avalar View Post

Just wanted to say one thing. The cursor is definitely gonna feel floaty in Overwatch because it introduces an insane amount of input lag in comparison to most other games. You have to get something like 400 fps to get below 5ms input latency, at least on my system with my 1080p IPS display, and my PC is not bad by any means.
I think you are just reading what you want from my post. I stated that my mouse feels floaty in Overwatch, CS:GO, and Natural Selection 2.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avalar View Post

Just wanted to say one thing. The cursor is definitely gonna feel floaty in Overwatch because it introduces an insane amount of input lag in comparison to most other games. You have to get something like 400 fps to get below 5ms input latency, at least on my system with my 1080p IPS display, and my PC is not bad by any means.
Enable reduce buffering and it disables the 1 frame of buffering you'd get otherwise, cursor feels insanely floaty afterward.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ball2hi View Post

So when you ENABLE Reduced Buffering, it makes your mouse feel floaty?
For me, yes, with it disabled it feels god awful though. I've always had xHCI and USB 3 controllers disabled though.
 
#10 ·
I've read motherboards z97 and z87 both have these usb (mouse) consistency issues as I've seen in other posts on these forums, I myself have this issue and I'm tempted to get a motherboard and cpu that isn't part of these intel series, maybe even AMD..

I've tried pretty much changing everything.... power supply, 3 different mice, 3 mouse pads, memory, pcie usb 2.0 card. All settings for dealing with power and input latency. I have a good quality monitor BENQ 144HZ and I'm pretty sure that isn't it either.

Maybe if you have a buddy with a different PC you can see if you feel it on theirs too.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ball2hi View Post

I think you are just reading what you want from my post. I stated that my mouse feels floaty in Overwatch, CS:GO, and Natural Selection 2.
Oh yeah, I didn't mean that Overwatch was the only problem lol. Those display settings they tell you to change to reduce the input lag in that game never seemed to work for me, though, so I just got used to it.

But right now, I'm getting the lowest input lag I've ever gotten by following some parts of a guide that r0ach posted a while ago, and by simply not installing NVIDIA's display drivers. So far, I haven't run into any problems in doing so, but I figured I would be fine anyway because I'm only using a 60Hz IPS display.
 
#12 ·
If you really have all this free time, try to do this:

install windows 7 64 bit
go in the scaling options and set display - no scaling
now open any game and set it at your native resolution + 120 hz

then come back and tell me how you think your mouse feels.
 
#13 ·
No difference to me. I used to always think 2.0 was better so I would disable all 3.0, but honestly I cant tell the difference. Make sure to update drivers
Quote:
Originally Posted by atarii View Post

If you really have all this free time, try to do this:

install windows 7 64 bit
go in the scaling options and set display - no scaling
now open any game and set it at your native resolution + 120 hz

then come back and tell me how you think your mouse feels.
is there a way to get display no scaling on windows 10?
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by atarii View Post

If you really have all this free time, try to do this:

install windows 7 64 bit
go in the scaling options and set display - no scaling
now open any game and set it at your native resolution + 120 hz

then come back and tell me how you think your mouse feels.
I had these problems back when I was on Windows 7, and had the same settings you suggested.
 
#15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timecard View Post

I've read motherboards z97 and z87 both have these usb (mouse) consistency issues as I've seen in other posts on these forums, I myself have this issue and I'm tempted to get a motherboard and cpu that isn't part of these intel series, maybe even AMD..

I've tried pretty much changing everything.... power supply, 3 different mice, 3 mouse pads, memory, pcie usb 2.0 card. All settings for dealing with power and input latency. I have a good quality monitor BENQ 144HZ and I'm pretty sure that isn't it either.

Maybe if you have a buddy with a different PC you can see if you feel it on theirs too.
That would explain a lot..

Hey, I also got a crappy soundcard to disable my onboard audio. It made a pretty big difference in aiming for me. Honestly I'm never touching another gigabyte product again. I've had nothing but problems with many of their products.
 
#16 ·
Are you sure you were using 120 hz and not 144? Because 144 is always gpu scaled if you are using a nvidia card, no matter what you set in your nvidia panel.
Quote:
is there a way to get display no scaling on windows 10?
Custom Resolution Utility (CRU). But Windows 10 has still a lot of problems (it installs wrong drivers, xbox dvr thing, etc.) so it's easier to test it on w7.
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ball2hi View Post

That would explain a lot..

Hey, I also got a crappy soundcard to disable my onboard audio. It made a pretty big difference in aiming for me. Honestly I'm never touching another gigabyte product again. I've had nothing but problems with many of their products.
Wait, did that actually work? Because I was contemplating a while back whether I would do the same thing. The card wouldn't just create some latency of it's own?
 
#18 ·
Nvidia drivers are installed by Windows anyway, so that should make 0 difference except for having slightly older driver versions.

Did you disable prerender frames for these games through your driver settings ? In at least Overwatch it's a very well known source of input lag, since certain vsync / screen setting combinations force 3 frames of prerender.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Menthalion View Post

Nvidia drivers are installed by Windows anyway, so that should make 0 difference except for having slightly older driver versions.

Did you disable prerender frames for these games through your driver settings ? In at least Overwatch it's a very well known source of input lag, since certain vsync / screen setting combinations force 3 frames of prerender.
Yeah, did all of that. The drivers for my card are installed (version 376.19), just not NVIDIA's display drivers; the 282 MB update that gives me all of those settings when I right click the desktop lol, don't have them anymore. Maybe they're included in the new driver updates? Idk.. But I started up Overwatch a little while ago and noticed a lot less input lag than I remember. Enough so that it doesn't bother me anymore. ;3

All I know is that once I uninstalled everything NVIDIA from my system and reinstalled only the drivers that are installed automatically when Windows detects my card, I've been experiencing a lot less input lag than I ever have before. Until I find some downside to not having all of NVIDIA's graphics and game-specific display settings, I'd recommend that everyone do what I did.
biggrin.gif
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by atarii View Post

Are you sure you were using 120 hz and not 144? Because 144 is always gpu scaled if you are using a nvidia card, no matter what you set in your nvidia panel.
Custom Resolution Utility (CRU). But Windows 10 has still a lot of problems (it installs wrong drivers, xbox dvr thing, etc.) so it's easier to test it on w7.
Do my settings look correct for 144hz?

edit: seems fine just found a vid jstar did on it
ill see if i notice a difference
 
#21 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by atarii View Post

Are you sure you were using 120 hz and not 144? Because 144 is always gpu scaled if you are using a nvidia card, no matter what you set in your nvidia panel.
Custom Resolution Utility (CRU). But Windows 10 has still a lot of problems (it installs wrong drivers, xbox dvr thing, etc.) so it's easier to test it on w7.
I am using 144hz, and It's on a Pixio PX277 and I have a RX480 (AMD). I also use CRU since my **** monitor is awful.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avalar View Post

Wait, did that actually work? Because I was contemplating a while back whether I would do the same thing. The card wouldn't just create some latency of it's own?
Yeah it made a HUGE difference for me, night and day. Though I might have just gotten lucky on the drivers/cards I got with the soundcard?
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by atarii View Post

Are you sure you were using 120 hz and not 144? Because 144 is always gpu scaled if you are using a nvidia card, no matter what you set in your nvidia panel.
Custom Resolution Utility (CRU). But Windows 10 has still a lot of problems (it installs wrong drivers, xbox dvr thing, etc.) so it's easier to test it on w7.
Interesting, do you have a reliable source for this? I'm rather sensitive to input lag and I can't really feel the difference between 120 and 144 hz, but I can feel the difference before and after changing input scaling.
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Conditioned View Post

Interesting, do you have a reliable source for this? I'm rather sensitive to input lag and I can't really feel the difference between 120 and 144 hz, but I can feel the difference before and after changing input scaling.
144Hz cannot be monitor scaled (by Nvidia at least) because it is a "non-native" refresh rate, Falkentyne talked about it, but when a BenQ monitor is doing monitor scaling it will say "Recommended Resolution: 1920x1080" if you are using a resolution that is non-1920x1080, the monitor does not say that if it is GPU scaled, it is very noticeable to me but Windows 10 is broken garbage so I can't use monitor scaling.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alya View Post

144Hz cannot be monitor scaled (by Nvidia at least) because it is a "non-native" refresh rate, Falkentyne talked about it, but when a BenQ monitor is doing monitor scaling it will say "Recommended Resolution: 1920x1080" if you are using a resolution that is non-1920x1080, the monitor does not say that if it is GPU scaled, it is very noticeable to me but Windows 10 is broken garbage so I can't use monitor scaling.
Is there anyway for me to tell if my 144hz 1440p IPS panel from Pixio (PX277) is being monitor or GPU scaled on my AMD card in Windows 10?
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alya View Post

144Hz cannot be monitor scaled (by Nvidia at least) because it is a "non-native" refresh rate, Falkentyne talked about it, but when a BenQ monitor is doing monitor scaling it will say "Recommended Resolution: 1920x1080" if you are using a resolution that is non-1920x1080, the monitor does not say that if it is GPU scaled, it is very noticeable to me but Windows 10 is broken garbage so I can't use monitor scaling.
Yes I got that but do you have a source for that? I find that particularly odd since benq sells the monitor I have as 144hz, meaning it should be native.

Update: just checked, and my monitor does not suggest getting a new resolution when I'm using 1920x1080@144, 1920x1080@120hz meaning it native. This on a benq xl2411t. It doesnt suggest a 1920x1080 resolution on 1366(1368?)x768@144 hz either but it does so at 120hz. I think it's gpu scaled when it does suggest a 1920x1080 and monitor scaled when it doesn't suggest when you have 'scaling on display in nvcpl. Doesn't that make more sense?

Btw, you should be able to do display scaling on win 10:

Start cru:

Delete -all- resolutions.

Add a resolution under 'Standard resolutions' @60hz (No more than 60).

Use the restart/restart64.exe in cru folder.

Go into nvcpl and create your resolution at 120/144 hz or whatever suits your needs.

Set scaling on display.

Rep me.

I have only tested this on win 8.1, where I couldn't get display scaling either previously, but from the guide I read it's the same process and it worked. I'll add the complete guide below in case I forgot something. Credit goes to some guy on guru3d, which I can't remember the name of.

1) Download Custum Resolution Utility
2) Delete all the resolutions under all the sections like this

(click delete all). So, the two board appear full blanked
3) Create a standard resolution (go to the 2nd whiteboard and select new) (important, standard is standard, dont select 120 Hz, in my case, 120 hz screen, i selected 60 hz 1920x1080)

4) Then select custom extension block and delete all theall the resolutions there too (delete all)

Click Ok

Click admin privileges Restart64 or Restart (if your SO is 64 pls choose Restart64 ) and wait for the screen to refresh two times.

Then go to NV Control panel and create your custom resolution if needed. Now I am able to choose No scaling - Perform Scaling On Display options. In Windows 10!! where I wasn't able before. Now mouse is snappier and smoother.

################################################################################################################################################################

discovered how to get Display scaling option.

1) Download Custum Resolution Utility
2) Delete all the resolutions under all the sections like this

(click delete all). So, the two board appear full blanked
3) Create a standard resolution (go to the 2nd whiteboard and select new) (important, standard is standard, dont select 120 Hz, in my case, 120 hz screen, i selected 60 hz 1920x1080)

4) Then select custom extension block and delete all theall the resolutions there too (delete all)

Click Ok

Click admin privileges Restart64 or Restart (if your SO is 64 pls choose Restart64 ) and wait for the screen to refresh two times.

Then go to NV Control panel and create your custom resolution if needed. Now I am able to choose No scaling - Perform Scaling On Display options. In Windows 10!! where I wasn't able before. Now mouse is snappier and smoother.
 
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