Kite,
 
Too dumb to get into a computer to unsolder and replace motherboards. Way out of my l league. Do you really got to melt them out?
 
Carrying the vestige of a third world survival mentality. Was a heathen missionary in the pits of human suffering across our planet until my 30's, wife too. Learned hard core the value of a piece of string, a plastic yogurt cup from the garbage.
 
Got into the medical field and ended up with enough money to buy anything I want. Has me at a paradox of affording any upgrade, but trying to squeeze out the last drop of what is already here. Left my heart in the dirt of Africa.
 
Not convinced about USB 2. Someone please otherwise educate me. Have some real CPU hogs in my collection. HeadCase for guitar processing. Nitroflex for keys. Others following the same pathology. My XP box with an ancient quad core and hard wired 1010LT handles them acceptable. Way faster box going thru the USB 2 Presonus is like a popcorn popper at lower latency settings. Far inferior to the 1010 LT hard wired and win XP.
 
Analysis from previous threads, and this one is to get a decent USB 2 external unit and forget old technology. Already got one and it sucks in comparison. Same drag through win 7 to win 8 to win 10. What am I missing here? Please advise.
 
John

 You need to give more information on what you want to do, what you have, and what you are willing to do.
Your information can vague. You mention a Presonus USB2. Well they have plenty. A USB device under $150 isn't going to perform like a $650 MOTU AVB or the $750 RME Babyface.  Just like my AP2496, 192 is not going to perform as well as a RME Hammerfall DSP 9632. 
 
Upgrade a system? What does that mean? Build your own or off the shelf?
There's plenty of AMD and Intel boards with PCI slots.
 
Go to Jim Roseberry's profile and see some of his posts. There is some education for you there.

Kite,
Will check Jim's site. Have a lot of respect for his knowledge.
Under the impression that USB 2 is USB 2. Doesn't matter who makes it as long as the protocol is adhered to.
Presonus makes some good stuff. Experience is that USB 2 is more throttled than a hard wired card. Can increase the fire power of the computer, better OS, more RAM. Still can't compensate for the limitation of a USB connection.
Just trying to muddle through the next upgrade. Toss the delta card. Go with an i7 n'th generation chip. 128 GB RAM. Limiting factor being the USB bottleneck that chokes the signal flow worse than an ancient hard wired setup with a fraction of the processing power.
 
John
 

In your position, with the funds to do it, buying a custom built "Recording PC" from Jim would be your best option.  He can configure the hardware to the best advantage for you.
 
If you read some of his posts on USB 2.0, most do not ever reach the full capability of a USB 2.0 port. 
 
My own personal thought on Presonus.  EVERY Presonus unit I tried either had a hardware problem (defective) new or died within a day.  I recently tried a new Studio 192 (USB 3.0), it worked the first day but the second day I powered it on and it would never power off (unless unplugged from AC power) and was sent back.  The Latency was poor too, their automatic setup, set the buffer at 1024 which resulted in very high and unusable latency (lots of posts on some recording forums about the poor latency).

JohnKenn
Under the impression that USB 2 is USB 2. Doesn't matter who makes it as long as the protocol is adhered to.
Presonus makes some good stuff. Experience is that USB 2 is more throttled than a hard wired card. Can increase the fire power of the computer, better OS, more RAM. Still can't compensate for the limitation of a USB connection.
Just trying to muddle through the next upgrade. Toss the delta card. Go with an i7 n'th generation chip. 128 GB RAM. Limiting factor being the USB bottleneck that chokes the signal flow worse than an ancient hard wired setup with a fraction of the processing power.
 

Hi John,
 
The quality of the USB-2 audio interface (and its driver) make all the difference in the world.
I run a RME Fireface UFX connected via USB-2.
Great low-latency performance
4.3ms total round-trip latency at a 48-sample ASIO buffer size 44.1k
To get lower than that, you need PCIe or Thunderbolt (running "PCIe via Thunderbolt" drivers).
 
I often leave my UFX set to a 48-sample ASIO buffer size.
If I'm working on a dense project, that might go up to 64-128 sample ASIO buffer size.
I never have to raise the ASIO buffer size above 128-samples.
 
MOTU's new AVB series are also great low-latency performers.
The Ultralite AVB connects via USB-2... while the larger AVB units have both USB-2 and Thunderbolt connections.
 
We have full "PCIe via Thunderbolt" support now under Windows 10.
You need one of the latest Z170x or X99p motherboards that offers Thunderbolt-3 via USB-C port.
You'll also need a Thunderbolt-3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt adapter (~$84).
Currently, MOTU is the only company that has "PCIe via Thunderbolt" drivers available for Windows.
Other companies will surely follow... but full "PCIe via Thunderbolt" support under Windows is very new.
 
An audio interface with 24-channels of I/O is nowhere near saturating the USB-2 bus.
Even though some USB-3 audio interfaces are now available, they're not outperforming their USB-2 counterparts.
USB-3 certainly has more bandwidth than USB-2.
But... if you're not close to using all the bandwidth of USB-2, simply throwing more bandwidth at the situation won't increase performance.
Liken the situation to a car that has a top speed of 100mph.
Doesn't matter if it's on a 2-lane, 4-lane, or 8-lane highway... the top speed will still be 100mph.
 
If you're thinking about the first generation USB-1.1 audio interfaces, those were indeed terrible.
USB-1.1 didn't have the necessary bandwidth for a multi-channel audio interface.

Jim, Kite, Fire,
 
Appreciate more insight into this you've given. So may be the Presonus drivers. Good card otherwise and was suspecting the driver integrity since so many others are getting great results via USB 2 with different hardware.
Have a USB 1 Alesis box, and definitely not the way to go.
Rational and reclusive side of me says to just use the XP setup til it falls apart since it works rock solid and already have more software than I can ever use installed on it.
 
John