Hi everyone,
first of all yes I know that there is an old knowledge base entry from 2014 regarding USB 3.0 pass-through in Workstation 9 and Intel chipsets (saying they are not supported) but I wanted to ask about the current state of affairs.
I use this motherboard with Intel C612 chipset that supplies four USB 3.0 ports (two on the back panel, two via internal pin header) it does not have an integrated ASMedia USB 3.0 hub (since the vendor is ASRock these and not Renesas chips would be likely). The system is running Windows 8.1 x64 so there is no installable USB 3.0 driver.
All USB ports work properly but what really bugs me is that only one can be used to pass USB 3.0 devices to guests (the bottom one in this picture):
Can anyone please explain why exactly this is the case? I would get it if the Intel chipset USB 3.0 ports in general would not work at all - but why is only one of four working when they are all supplied by the same chipset controller? Needless to say USB 2.0 devices can be used on every single port of the motherboard.
Is the support of host USB 3.0 controllers that use the generic Microsoft xHCI driver something that gets better in Workstation 12? That and the relatively slow network performance (host<->guest) are my personal itches regarding Workstation.
Thank you very much!