I normally connect my controller to certain USB ports because I believed they offered lower latency. Recently, every device I plug into those ports appears under the AMD USB controller in USBTreeView instead of the Nvidia controller. I checked the other ports and updated the USB drivers, but I still cannot find any ports that appear to use Nvidia. Is this a hardware, driver, or USBTreeView issue, and does the controller assignment actually affect latency?
2 Answers
There usually is no meaningful latency advantage from plugging a controller into a particular USB controller. Unless a port is overloaded, malfunctioning, or sharing bandwidth with another device, the difference should be negligible. The controller assignment may have changed after a BIOS reset, driver update, or hardware change, but that does not automatically indicate a problem. Check the motherboard manual and BIOS settings, and reinstall the chipset and USB drivers from the motherboard manufacturer rather than relying only on generic updates.
The term “Nvidia USB port” is probably mixing up the graphics card with the motherboard’s USB controllers. USB ports are normally managed by the motherboard chipset or a separate USB controller, while Nvidia generally provides the GPU. USBTreeView is showing which controller owns each port, not necessarily a performance mode. To identify the ports accurately, you would need to provide the motherboard model and explain which physical ports you mean.
I’m not completely sure about the latency claim either—I originally followed a tuning suggestion and noticed the setup felt better. I’ll check the motherboard documentation and chipset drivers instead.