USB ports are bringing up my latency, what to do?

[danbronson]

I went to this site and downloaded the latency checker.

DPC Latency Checker

My latency was all over the place, going up into 1000 μs often but not really going much above that. After much experimenting, I found that all I needed to do to get things consistently at around 30 μs was disable every single USB port on my computer. I've still got internet and firewire running as well as several applications and the latency is now great.

But unfortunately I can't just live without USB. I use it for my external harddrive and my MIDI keyboard as well as several less important items like iPod sync, wireless keyboard and my digital camera's sync.

So I'm wondering if there is another way around this. Is it possible to simply replace my current USB ports? Maybe that's a stupid question (I'm not very computer savvy). Is replacing the motherboard possible? I'm really not sure if there's anything that can be done. Is this latency just a compromise I have to make to use USB?

Fwiw, the computer is an HP desktop with Windows Vista preloaded. It was pretty cheap ($400 last summer).

Thanks for any advice you can give me! I have a lot to learn from you guys!