Intel NIC actualy decreased performance???

[greengolftee87]

My motherboard has a Realtek RTL8168D/8111D Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC so I figured id put in an extra PCI intel pro1000 MT NIC that I had. This caused me to lose about 10 MB/s (< 50 total) on network transfers and the destination drive to start seeking very loudly (Hitachi 7200 2TB)
The board has nothing else in it except a video card and OS SSD, there are 4 PCIx8 lanes and 3 PCI slots. Its using the intel ichr10.

 

[HHunt]

Since the target HD seeking has nothing to do with the transmitting hardware - are you sure nothing else has changed? (You could try alternating tests with both cards - just give them IPs on different subnets and give the target an alias on both.)

 

[hawk82]

Run iperf to verify the issue is with network bandwidth. If it isn't then the problem is somehow with your disk i/o.

 

[C7J0yc3]

+1 for iperf to see if it is network or disk. You might try resetting your BIOS settings to default and try again, and also check the hardware settings of the realtek and the intel cards to see if they match.

Also try going to intel's site and see if you have chipset driver updates, NIC driver updates, go to the motherboard manufacture's site and see if you have a BIOS update, and then go to Hitachi's site and see if there is a firmware update for the drive. Do these updates one at a time and test in between each step to find what the actual fix is.

 

[dandragonrage]

You didn't happen to have jumbo frames enabled for the Realtek but not the Intel, right?

 

[GotNoRice]

It might be a PCI limitation. Also while Intel NICs are awesome, the Pro/1000 MT adapter is probably about 7 or 8 years old at this point.

If you can afford it, I'd suggest an Intel PCIe Pro/1000 CT adapter. I've used two of these to transfer info between SSD raid configs on different computers and had no issues going all the way to 95%+ gigabit utilization.

 

[greengolftee87]

I think I'm going to stick with the onboard until i get a new server.

PCI
C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop>iperf.exe -c 192.168.2.185 -P 1 -i 1 -p 5001 -f M -t 20 -w64k
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.2.185, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 0.06 MByte
------------------------------------------------------------
[108] local 192.168.2.140 port 59962 connected with 192.168.2.185 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[108]  0.0- 1.0 sec  75.4 MBytes  75.4 MBytes/sec
[108]  1.0- 2.0 sec  82.6 MBytes  82.6 MBytes/sec
[108]  2.0- 3.0 sec  82.3 MBytes  82.3 MBytes/sec
[108]  3.0- 4.0 sec  82.9 MBytes  82.9 MBytes/sec
[108]  4.0- 5.0 sec  82.2 MBytes  82.2 MBytes/sec
[108]  5.0- 6.0 sec  83.1 MBytes  83.1 MBytes/sec
[108]  6.0- 7.0 sec  83.2 MBytes  83.2 MBytes/sec
[108]  7.0- 8.0 sec  82.9 MBytes  82.9 MBytes/sec
[108]  8.0- 9.0 sec  83.2 MBytes  83.2 MBytes/sec
[108]  9.0-10.0 sec  82.8 MBytes  82.8 MBytes/sec
[108] 10.0-11.0 sec  83.1 MBytes  83.1 MBytes/sec
[108] 11.0-12.0 sec  82.5 MBytes  82.5 MBytes/sec
[108] 12.0-13.0 sec  82.4 MBytes  82.4 MBytes/sec
[108] 13.0-14.0 sec  83.2 MBytes  83.2 MBytes/sec
[108] 14.0-15.0 sec  82.6 MBytes  82.6 MBytes/sec
[108] 15.0-16.0 sec  82.4 MBytes  82.4 MBytes/sec
[108] 16.0-17.0 sec  83.3 MBytes  83.3 MBytes/sec
[108] 17.0-18.0 sec  81.9 MBytes  81.9 MBytes/sec
[108] 18.0-19.0 sec  82.8 MBytes  82.8 MBytes/sec
[108] 19.0-20.0 sec  82.7 MBytes  82.7 MBytes/sec
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[108]  0.0-20.0 sec  1647 MBytes  82.3 MBytes/sec

ONBOARD
C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop>iperf.exe -c 192.168.2.145 -P 1 -i 1 -p 5001 -f M -t 20 -w64k
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.2.145, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 0.06 MByte
------------------------------------------------------------
[108] local 192.168.2.140 port 60007 connected with 192.168.2.145 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[108]  0.0- 1.0 sec  79.5 MBytes  79.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  1.0- 2.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  2.0- 3.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  3.0- 4.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  4.0- 5.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  5.0- 6.0 sec  83.4 MBytes  83.4 MBytes/sec
[108]  6.0- 7.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  7.0- 8.0 sec  83.6 MBytes  83.6 MBytes/sec
[108]  8.0- 9.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108]  9.0-10.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108] 10.0-11.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108] 11.0-12.0 sec  83.7 MBytes  83.7 MBytes/sec
[108] 12.0-13.0 sec  83.4 MBytes  83.4 MBytes/sec
[108] 13.0-14.0 sec  83.3 MBytes  83.3 MBytes/sec
[108] 14.0-15.0 sec  83.7 MBytes  83.7 MBytes/sec
[108] 15.0-16.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108] 16.0-17.0 sec  83.5 MBytes  83.5 MBytes/sec
[108] 17.0-18.0 sec  83.3 MBytes  83.3 MBytes/sec
[108] 18.0-19.0 sec  83.2 MBytes  83.2 MBytes/sec
[108] 19.0-20.0 sec  83.1 MBytes  83.1 MBytes/sec
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[108]  0.0-20.0 sec  1665 MBytes  83.2 MBytes/sec

iperf then windows copy with intel NIC

iperf then windows copy with onboard

The reason both graphs say intel pro 1000 is because this graph was captured server side which also has a intel pro 1000 MT. Also during the windows copy the destination drive again experienced heavy seeking so maybe its a issue with the ich10r. I know the Intels are old but what do you guys think of it in comparison to the realtek? it seems like it put up a good fight and was a little more consistent.