A7N8X Deluxe: PCI NIC Faster then Either On-Board NIC

[frank]

Hi,

I have an A7N8X Deluxe with a single PCI card, a D-Link NIC. I've done
some testing and have found that the PCI is 50KB/S faster than either
onboard NIC. Both onboard nics provide about 300 KB/S, and the D-Link does
about 350 KB/S when downloading from usenet. I've tested this with a
bandwith monitor app and with the usenet app's built-in bandwith readout
(BNR2). It's not a fluke: I fbought the mainboard a few weeks ago, and
noticed the difference right away, so I turned the onboard nics off and
used the PCI. Last night I double checked and my originl impression was
confirmed.

Has anyone else noticed this, and is there somethign I can do to resolve
this issue? I would have bet money that the onboard nics would have an
edge over the PCI.

BTW, while looking over the driver info for the onboards, I noticed that
the 3Com "Advanced" tab has a bunch of tweak settings. Everything's
installed defaults now: perhaps I should diddle with one of them, any
ideas?

OS: Windows XP Home

The driver for the 3Com onboard nic:
Provider: 3Com
Driver Date: 8/13/02
Driver Version: 4.31.0.0

The driver for the Nvidia Nfoce onboard nic:
Provider: Nvidia
Driver Date: 9/23/02
Driver Version: 2.8.1.0

Thanks,

 

[Minotaur]

Strange, pulled 700KB/s+ through the nvidia NIC from my internet Cable
connection.
Latest driver for the nvidia NIC I have is, DriverVer = 11/27/2002, 3.1.3
from nvidia.com.

 

[rstlne]

Hi,

Perhaps the "Optimize for" setting in Windows? I think someone found
that the setting was actually reversed, in that selecting "Optimize
for : Throughput" conserves CPU instead of increasing LAN speed.
Anyway, it is a setting you can try modifying - details are here:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&[email protected]

AFAIK these days LAN chips always use DMA to transfer packets into
memory - I don't know if it is even possible to accidently disable
DMA, which would slow down things a lot. It would be best to test
the LAN interface at 100BT speeds, by connecting to another
computer either directly (using a crossover cable), or connecting
two or more computers to a 100BT router. My crappy computers manage
a couple megabytes a second via 100BT, so you should be able to do
better than that.

HTH,
Paul

At least your one of the first people who actually used a NETWORK connection
that can be maxed to test it, instead of a service that is moving..
I hate how people quote speeds of their download, or maybee even something
like analogX
You need to send the packets from the other pc where it can have the exact
same measurement for both cards.. but hey.. I am just me

 

[Phil]

Strange, pulled 700KB/s+ through the nvidia NIC from my internet Cable
connection.
Latest driver for the nvidia NIC I have is, DriverVer = 11/27/2002, 3.1.3
from nvidia.com.

~6mbit internet connection?

Damn BT for only letting us have up to 2mbps, and even then at stupidly high
prices (UK ADSL)