Fun with NICs - not...

[ragnargd]

Hi,

my Gigabit-NICs are not fun.

My "compatible" realtek and broadcom NICs work, but deliver just about 50MBit, which is abysmal performance for NICs calling themselves PCIe Gigabit (on all W10, XP and W98SE).

Is suspect incompatibility between the drivers and the Mobo (ASRock 970A Pro3 R2.0), as even the onboard Realtek (that only works on XP and W10) delivers just about 50MBit. I remember quite a bit better performace under W7 on otherMoBos, delivering about 450 MBit (I don't remember on which MoBos, though, i suspect those MoBos are long gone).

(Other HW: FX-4320@stock, NV 7900 GTX 512MB PCIe, SB Audigy 2 Platinum PCI, 4 x 4GB DDR3 1333, W98SE on Sata III 60GB SSD, XP and W10 on Sata III 120 GB SSD each)

Of course i tested with other NICs in the same PCIe-Slots:

- An Intel 1000 CT Desktop PCIe 1x works about right under W10 and XP, delivering 936 MBit

- an Intel Aquantia NBase-T PCIe 1x (by StarTech) delivers blazing 2.5GBit (the NIC is too expensive, though)

- an Intel Aquantia NBase-T PCIe 4x (by Asus) delivers trail-hot-blazing 4-6GBit in the electrical 4x PCIe slot, saturating the SSD (my Fileserver with its M.2 Raid5 can deliver 8GBit).

And my trusted Intel 1000MT PCI ist just held back by the PCI-bus, delivering about 220MBit (which, as you think about, makes the realtek and broadcom PCIe look even worse).

I will stick to latter, as, by all means, from all NICs working under all three OS, it has the best performance on that MoBo.

------------------------------------

A little research on the "Intel CT Desktop Adapter":

I showed a little confusion why i did not get that adapter to run, as there seems to be a driver for W98SE.

Reality is, of course, not giving in to what i think, no matter what i try. Here is the inconvenient truth:

There has never been an "Intel PRO/1000 CT Desktop Adapter". If you find a product by that name (it happens a lot), it is a wrong label.

There WAS an "Intel PRO/1000 CT Desktop Connection" or "... Network Connection", having a driver for W9x, but that is an entirely different thing!

That "thing" is purely an onboard adapter, and is connected to the CPU by a DMA-technique called "CSA", chipset (probably!) is Intel 82572EI.

It provided Gigabit, by using a direct connection to the memory controller hub of the then-new Springdale- und Canterwood-chipsets (at about the year of 2003).

There were some popular P4-Gamer boards using that OnBoard LAN.

But there never was a "Desktop Adapter" of that type, not for PCI, nor for PCIe, and, basically, never could have been, because CSA was (probably) not meant for that, and, for sure, never happened.

Since 2008, Intel produces an "Intel CT Desktop Adapter", GigaBit, PCIe, but there is no "PRO" in the name, it has the Intel 82574L chipset, and isn't even remotely compatible to the old driver-set from 2006 for W9x. It somewhat belongs to the Intel PRO set, as Intel says itself, but that just adds to the confusion.

That one is a fine PCIe GB Adapter, and you CAN probably get that one run with W9x, by using the DOS-Driver (see the sticky), but that is an entirely different matter.

Cheers,

Ragnar G.D.

-------------------------------------

ignore the rest down here, this is just for documentation purposes... ;-)

-------------------------------------

What unnerves me, is, that i don't get the Intel 1000 CT to work under W98SE, even though it nominally has drivers for W98SE, and the drivers "semi-detect" the card.

I see that Ruthan had no luck with them either, while back in the days spaceheeder got it to work on W95:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/141402-windows-95-21ghz-cpu-limit-broken/page/7/?tab=comments#comment-948852

Peter mentioned them here (while i found them in the list of infs in the latest ProSet sofware for W9x):

https://msfn.org/board/topic/85037-new-intel-1-gbit-ethernet-cards-and-w9x/?tab=comments#comment-575835

Does anyone have one of them running nowadays?

I see there a different variants of that NIC, maybe the part i bought is not covered by the driver any more.

Anyone?

-------------------------------------

Cheers,

Ragnar G.D.

Edited May 25, 2020 by ragnargd
research, complete HW List for debugging questions, typos

[Goodmaneuver]

I would try setting the HT Bus Speed down to low speed say 400 in BIOS or even try 200 if 400 boots OK. HT Bus Width set to 8 bit also might be worth a try.

[ragnargd]

I might try. But for my curiosity: Why and what is that supposed to help with? Only certain NICs are slow, not all of them, and i don't ever overclock...

[Goodmaneuver]

My on-board NIC drew more current than it should but is better now. It was the first to go slow when the power supply dipped. I changed the power supply (PSU) which was weak to fix this. I run my HT Bus speed at 400 at the moment for two reasons the PS2 port and the NIC. The mother board is going well. I think these 2 pieces of hardware were not exercised before I got it and it is important to have everything running correctly. The HT bus was 400 before I changed the power supply. The PSU was OK but got worse especially when I was using 3 SCSI drives, some are sensitive to voltage dips and also were playing up. The power supply was getting weaker over time. I have had to run the HT bus at lowest settings for video cards on other machines. Once things have worn in a bit the bus speed can be increased a bit but this will take some time. If everything is working correctly then the motherboard is less likely to fail and should have a long life. The on-board NIC goes at 5.2 MBytes/s at the moment from Win10 machine writing to WinME. It is a 100Mbit/s NIC.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[pangoomis]

My ThinkPad T42p has an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller, here are the latest 98SE drivers for Intel LAN adapters: http://www.tmeeco.eu/9X4EVER/GOODIES/PRO98M.EXE

Any Intel LAN chip that is not in the INF of these drivers will probably not work at all.

My ASRock H110M-DVS R3.0 has an old enough revision of the generic Realtek gigabit chip that lucklily works with the official Realtek LAN drivers for 98SE.

I haven't done any testing myself on either of these adapters in terms of speed. Maybe will do in the future.

Have you tried using TCP Optimizer v. 3.08?  You can get it from here: https://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

[ragnargd]

@MrMateczko:

I will try both, but later, as i don't have time at the moment.

Btw: Cool, this is the newest Intel-Driver for 9x/ME, mine are older. Thank you!

@Goodmaneuver:

I already tried your tips. This didn't change a thing... here.

But as i had the feeling, there is some wisdom in what you reported, i tried it on another PC (some ASRock iCafe MoBo) showing strange behaviour, i already lost a GPU.

And guess what: It helped me detect the problem, here the PSU being the culprit. Wow! Probably saved my hardware. So: Thank you a lot!!!

[Goodmaneuver]

There still could be hardware not toggling. If it is the board that makes a crackling sound through the sound then I would check temperatures of all chips and put in extra cooling if necessary and still use a slow HT bus speed and hope it comes good.

[ragnargd]

@Goodmaneuver

The MoBo and cards show no extraordinary temps, and there are no problems with the board, it runs absolutely fine, no issues at all.

And with Intel NICs, everything works like a charm. Only the Realtek NICs have problems, showing abysmal performance.

I have found out that many realtek cards have some performance problems on W10, of which most can be dealt with by setting parameters, while others will be dealt with by microsoft-updates. It seems to be fairly common:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/realtek-pcie-gbe-family-controller-very-slow/f42884d5-37fa-45d7-89a0-552f81ab1671

So, after all, it really is a problem of the drivers and parameters. These didn't get much love from realtek lately.

--> The latest Windows Version together with the latest Realtek driver brought about 50% with the W9x-compatible RTL8139x --> 80MBit, and whooping 100% with the onboard RTL8111E --> 100-200MBit. Still fail, but at least they gained some ground against the Intel Pro 1000 MT PCI (which is restricted by the PCI-bus).

For the time being, i will just stay with intel, that solves these problems.

Anyway, thank you very much for your help, it is highly appreciated!

Edited May 2, 2020 by ragnargd

[ragnargd]

For the Intel Pro CT Desktop Adapters, the cards sold nowadays are of a revision (from years 2012-2014) that is not supported by the old drivers (latest year 2006) in any way, i really tried hard, they just don't work together.

I now try to find old revisions of the cards.

Most were used as onboard-chips or add-in cards on serverboards, but there never have been many in circulation in 2006 in the first place.

I found pictures of those old Pro CT NICs, they do look different from those of today (much shorter PCB, and very often only available as low-profile).

I don't expect to find any anytime soon, so unless some show up, i will stay with the Pro 1000 MT PCI, which are quite ok (and better that the realtrek PCIe chips at the moment).

[ragnargd]

On 4/25/2020 at 1:27 PM, MrMateczko said:

My ASRock H110M-DVS R3.0 has an old enough revision of the generic Realtek gigabit chip that lucklily works with the official Realtek LAN drivers for 98SE.

Could you do me a favour, and look up the Vendor/Device-ID of that NIC?

[pangoomis]

On 5/2/2020 at 6:08 PM, ragnargd said:

Could you do me a favour, and look up the Vendor/Device-ID of that NIC?

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_81681849&REV_02

The SUBSYS gets ignored by the 98SE driver INF and shortens to:

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&REV_02

the INF supports REV_01, 02 and 03. You might try inserting newer revisions manually, but I've tried that before with no luck.

These are the latest PCI-E Windows 98 SE Realtek Lan drivers which I'm mentioning here:
https://soggi.org/files/driver/Realtek_RTL81xx_PCIe_FE-GbE_v5.708_11192008_Win98SE-ME.zip

Edited May 3, 2020 by MrMateczko

[ragnargd]

On 5/3/2020 at 11:34 PM, MrMateczko said:

These are the latest PCI-E Windows 98 SE Realtek Lan drivers which I'm mentioning here:
https://soggi.org/files/driver/Realtek_RTL81xx_PCIe_FE-GbE_v5.708_11192008_Win98SE-ME.zip

soggi.org is a real treat. Thank you!

[Goodmaneuver]

I have fixed audio hissing when stopping MP-HC  ( no not quite )  and the solution could be looked into for your board problems. The solution was to replace the north-bridge to south-bridge bridging driver from a VIA standard host bridge to a VIA Ultra Vlink controller. The standard host bridge was the default compatible install and the Vlink driver needs forcing to use it but installs straight away. In the windows device manager and viewing by devices type mine was the last one on the PCI bus. The memory controller was the first one shown on the PCI bus viewing by device connection and I used an nVidia driver for mine.
 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Goodmaneuver
Only improved it will still happen