A7N8X-E nvidia 10/100 Ethernet problem - My Experience.

[Don Hewitt]

I just wanted to share an experience that I had with a problem with
the A7N8X-E mb.

It started when I noticed that my CPU usage as reported by task
manager was at 30% with no apps and very little processes running. I
loaded Ad-Aware to make sure I had no spyware running.

I downloaded an App called Process Explorer which showed that
Interrupts and DPC's were the culprits of the cpu 30& Kernal usage.

I began shutting down hardware components in the bios and rebooting
until I found the device that was causing the problem - Nvidia 10/100
ethernet controller. I loaded the latest nvidia drivers and updated
the mb bios to version 1012 and this did not fix the problem.

I then remembered that I had a 1G Marvell ethernet controller on board
so I enabled it by changing the jumper (although it was supposed to be
enabled by default). I then disabled the nvidia ethernet in the bios
and connected my ethernet cable to the 1G port and my CPU usage went
down to 0% and I had no DPC's.

I would appreciate any opinions concerning the nvidia 10/100 ethernet
controller. I am assuming that it is a HW problem at this point.

thanks,

Don

 

[Sam]

Sometime on, or about Sat, 28 Aug 2004 11:05:39 -0600, Don Hewitt
wrote:

I just wanted to share an experience that I had with a problem with
the A7N8X-E mb.

It started when I noticed that my CPU usage as reported by task
manager was at 30% with no apps and very little processes running. I
loaded Ad-Aware to make sure I had no spyware running.

I downloaded an App called Process Explorer which showed that
Interrupts and DPC's were the culprits of the cpu 30& Kernal usage.

I began shutting down hardware components in the bios and rebooting
until I found the device that was causing the problem - Nvidia 10/100
ethernet controller. I loaded the latest nvidia drivers and updated
the mb bios to version 1012 and this did not fix the problem.

I then remembered that I had a 1G Marvell ethernet controller on board
so I enabled it by changing the jumper (although it was supposed to be
enabled by default). I then disabled the nvidia ethernet in the bios
and connected my ethernet cable to the 1G port and my CPU usage went
down to 0% and I had no DPC's.

I would appreciate any opinions concerning the nvidia 10/100 ethernet
controller. I am assuming that it is a HW problem at this point.

thanks,

Don

I've used the nVidia ethernet port before (on the original A7N8X and
my current A7N8X-E board and have never noticed this behavior before.
Are you sure that some rogue program wasn't using the port for
something?

I've found that while AdAware is a very good program it does miss
things. I also use Spybot and PestPatrol as well. I've seen one catch
things the others have missed.

Sam

 

[Steve D]

Same here...i have the gb port disabled and am only using the 10/100
port....no problems here....
I agree with the last post...could also be a bad port...if the nic is bad it
could be incorectly handling packets and that could be your issue.
Steve

 

[TomC]

Don;

I noticed numerous "read_socket_data: recv failure" logged Samba errors with
the NVidia controller, which went almost to zero when I switched to the
Marvell using otherwise identical settings, in XP Pro. The data transfer
rate increased, too.

TomC