Maximus III Formula lan card

I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is a
great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire recently
installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring in my
house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They advertise 1
gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps. C Spire
suggested my computer was too old too handle higher speeds.

The Maximus III Formula has a Realtek RTL8110SC Gigabit LAN controller.
Is there any reason it would not still be capable of handling 1
gigabit speeds? Would installing a pci lan card help?

Edward wrote:
I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is a
great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire recently
installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring in my
house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They advertise 1
gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps. C Spire
suggested my computer was too old too handle higher speeds.

The Maximus III Formula has a Realtek RTL8110SC Gigabit LAN controller.
Is there any reason it would not still be capable of handling 1 gigabit
speeds? Would installing a pci lan card help?

Time to buy another NIC card...

Even Intel makes bad ones once in a while. I don't see any
reports for this one that "the card stopped working". There
is some other Intel chip, where driver updates haven't fixed
whatever the problem with the chip was.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106036

What you should be seeing on the RealTek, is extremely high CPU usage.
Even though much of the data movement is done via DMA transfer.

I bought an RTL8169SC, which is the chip before the 8110SC.
Both are PCI GbE NICs.

The 8169SC, I was getting around 5 interrupts per packet processed.
Indicating there is some problem with interrupts. The interrupt
rate was around 10,000 per second while I was doing NIC speed tests.
This is getting close to where Windows involves interrupt storm protection
(does some sort of masking in an attempt to keep the machine responsive).

When I ran Linux on the box, that was too much for Linux. And
I had to remove the card.

So you will see high CPU usage, as the CPU tries to handle all those
interrupts. That's too much CPU to just be copying 100MB/sec
of data. The CPU could do memory to memory copies, and barely
break a sweat doing that.

I've pretty well given up on buying replacement NICs now, because
it's so hard to find a winner. Good luck.

Paul

On 1/10/2015 11:06 PM, Paul wrote:
Edward wrote:
I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is
a great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire
recently installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring
in my house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They
advertise 1 gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps. C
Spire suggested my computer was too old too handle higher speeds.

The Maximus III Formula has a Realtek RTL8110SC Gigabit LAN
controller. Is there any reason it would not still be capable of
handling 1 gigabit speeds? Would installing a pci lan card help?

Time to buy another NIC card...

Even Intel makes bad ones once in a while. I don't see any
reports for this one that "the card stopped working". There
is some other Intel chip, where driver updates haven't fixed
whatever the problem with the chip was.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106036

What you should be seeing on the RealTek, is extremely high CPU usage.
Even though much of the data movement is done via DMA transfer.

I bought an RTL8169SC, which is the chip before the 8110SC.
Both are PCI GbE NICs.

The 8169SC, I was getting around 5 interrupts per packet processed.
Indicating there is some problem with interrupts. The interrupt
rate was around 10,000 per second while I was doing NIC speed tests.
This is getting close to where Windows involves interrupt storm protection
(does some sort of masking in an attempt to keep the machine responsive).

When I ran Linux on the box, that was too much for Linux. And
I had to remove the card.

So you will see high CPU usage, as the CPU tries to handle all those
interrupts. That's too much CPU to just be copying 100MB/sec
of data. The CPU could do memory to memory copies, and barely
break a sweat doing that.

I've pretty well given up on buying replacement NICs now, because
it's so hard to find a winner. Good luck.

Paul

Thanks Paul. I considered building a new system, but this motherboard
has been great. Absolutely no problems, other than this.

Edward writes:

I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is
a great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire
recently installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring
in my house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They
advertise 1 gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps.

You're getting around 280 mbps measured how? It's always possible that
whatever service you're trying to use can't deliver data any faster.

C Spire suggested my computer was too old too handle higher speeds.

Of course. On the other hand if you have only one computer and can't
show that it handles gigabit speeds in your home network just fine it
may be hard to convince them. Maybe if you did some tests in quiet times
like early in a weekend morning? If you achieve better performance then
you can complain they overbooked the capacity in your
neighborhood. Although I doubt that's going to do you any good.

The Maximus III Formula has a Realtek RTL8110SC Gigabit LAN
controller. Is there any reason it would not still be capable of
handling 1 gigabit speeds?

At least
http://www.legitreviews.com/asus-sab...review_1457/11
has a test of a Sabertooth X58 motherboard with the same ethernet chip
and it achieved 752.336 Mbit/s with 1.61% CPU usage. Other motherboards
(mostly Realteks too with various 8111 chips) achieved around 945
Mbit/s. So clearly the RTL8110SC isn't the fastest chip around but it's
not that bad.

Would installing a pci lan card help?

Maybe. Go for a PCI Express lan card.

On 1/12/2015 1:03 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
Edward writes:

I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is
a great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire
recently installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring
in my house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They
advertise 1 gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps.

You're getting around 280 mbps measured how? It's always possible that
whatever service you're trying to use can't deliver data any faster.

Thanks for your help. The 280 is using speedtest.net. I just tried
AT&T's test, and got 270 download, but 732 upload. Similar with
Comcast, 220 download, 712 upload. What would that mean?

Edward wrote:
On 1/12/2015 1:03 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
Edward writes:

I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is
a great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire
recently installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring
in my house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They
advertise 1 gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps.

You're getting around 280 mbps measured how? It's always possible that
whatever service you're trying to use can't deliver data any faster.

Thanks for your help. The 280 is using speedtest.net. I just tried
AT&T's test, and got 270 download, but 732 upload. Similar with
Comcast, 220 download, 712 upload. What would that mean?



Do you have two computers in the house ?

You can use TTCP to conduct tests between the two machines.
One machine echoes packets, the other machine conducts the test.
You can then reverse roles, and retest. The purpose of doing this
is to see whether your LAN level operation is capable of full
GbE rates. Doing this test is to help prove the plumbing in your
home is OK. Then you can return to WAN testing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ttcp

You can get the Windows version here.

http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/ttcpdown1.htm

Paul

Edward writes:

Thanks for your help. The 280 is using speedtest.net. I just tried
AT&T's test, and got 270 download, but 732 upload. Similar with
Comcast, 220 download, 712 upload. What would that mean?

I have to say that seems a little odd. I don't think it's an issue with
your computer if it can get good upload speeds. I'd guess it's
congestion or throttling in your download by the ISP. Could even be a
slightly bad cable somewhere but I'd assume your new wiring was tested
after it was installed?

On 1/13/2015 2:45 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
Edward writes:

Thanks for your help. The 280 is using speedtest.net. I just tried
AT&T's test, and got 270 download, but 732 upload. Similar with
Comcast, 220 download, 712 upload. What would that mean?

I have to say that seems a little odd. I don't think it's an issue with
your computer if it can get good upload speeds. I'd guess it's
congestion or throttling in your download by the ISP. Could even be a
slightly bad cable somewhere but I'd assume your new wiring was tested
after it was installed?

The guys that installed the wiring seemed to know what they were doing.
They told me they tested everything. It is a brand new service, so I
really don't think they would be throttling.

On 1/12/2015 1:57 PM, Paul wrote:
Edward wrote:
On 1/12/2015 1:03 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
Edward writes:

I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is
a great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire
recently installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring
in my house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They
advertise 1 gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps.

You're getting around 280 mbps measured how? It's always possible that
whatever service you're trying to use can't deliver data any faster.

Thanks for your help. The 280 is using speedtest.net. I just tried
AT&T's test, and got 270 download, but 732 upload. Similar with
Comcast, 220 download, 712 upload. What would that mean?



Do you have two computers in the house ?

You can use TTCP to conduct tests between the two machines.
One machine echoes packets, the other machine conducts the test.
You can then reverse roles, and retest. The purpose of doing this
is to see whether your LAN level operation is capable of full
GbE rates. Doing this test is to help prove the plumbing in your
home is OK. Then you can return to WAN testing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ttcp

You can get the Windows version here.

http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/ttcpdown1.htm

Paul

I don't have two computers capable of gigabit speed. Thanks for the
suggestion though. I installed an Intel NIC card last night. To do so,
I had to move my graphics card to a different slot to uncover the slot
for the card. The network speed actually dropped about 25% overall.
The Intel card was marginally faster than when hooked up to the onboard
connector, but still slower than without the Intel card installed.

Thanks for everyone's help. I think I'll get a C Spire person out here
to check it out.

Edward, have to tried to flash new BIOS and Firmware and install new drivers
to MB, LAN controller and modem?

Hope this helps
Chris



"Edward" wrote in message ...

I have been using a Maximus III Formula motherboard since 2009. It is a
great motherboard and I have had no problems at all. C Spire recently
installed "fiber to the home" in my neighborhood. The wiring in my
house was too old, so they installed all new wiring. They advertise 1
gigabit internet speed. I am getting around 280 mbps. C Spire
suggested my computer was too old too handle higher speeds.

The Maximus III Formula has a Realtek RTL8110SC Gigabit LAN controller.
Is there any reason it would not still be capable of handling 1
gigabit speeds? Would installing a pci lan card help?