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General NIC questions. Any input is welcome. Thanks.

M

mooojojojo

Senior member
Here is my situation: I transferred my cable modem from USB to a NIC in order to unload the CPU and get rid of the constant CPU usage. With the NIC (a CNet Pro200 100Mbps) card there is still ~8-10% usage with spikes to 20% every 5 seconds. I wouldn't care so much but when I play any game I get these hiccups... So what I just did:
- updated the drivers from the default WinXP drivers which are automatically installed (it did recognize it properly as a CNet Pro200), to the latest ones (Sept 2002) on CNet's site.
- removed the disabled PCI modem from my case, although I don't think it was the problem, but just in case...
- switched the NIC for the cable modem from Auto Sense speed setting (Connection Type under Advanced in the device properties), to 10Mbps Full Duplex.
All this lead to a more bearable ~5-7% CPU load.

Ok enough intro. 🙂 What I actually want is for someone to explain what the various settings in the Advanced tab are, and how they may affect CPU usage.
- Store And Forward (currently disabled)
- Transmit Threshold (set at 512bytes at the moment)
- Also would disabling the 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' option under the Power Management tab (in the device window) help in any way?
- Finally - would setting the Connection type to 100Mbps Full Duplex to my local network card help with anything or should I just leave it at Auto Sense?

note: How do I know it's the NIC causing the usage? Well if I disable the Internet connection (I mean the one to the cable modem) the CPU goes down to 0%.

So there.. any help appreciated. Thanks! 🙂
 
Looks like you have a software NIC, if I were you I'd get rid of the CNet NIC and buy a quality 3COM or Linksys NIC. They are true hardware NIC's and will have a nominal load on your system.
 
Originally posted by: NokiaDude
Looks like you have a software NIC, if I were you I'd get rid of the CNet NIC and buy a quality 3COM or Linksys NIC. They are true hardware NIC's and will have a nominal load on your system.
Click to expand...

Add the nForce NIC to that list also.
 
I have a 3Com 3C940 GigE NIC, and its not something I would put on my quality list.

3Com stopped making good NICs a while back.
 
Ok, but how do I know for sure that it's a software NIC (btw - never heard of these before)?

If I decide to swap it - what should I use? I can get a DLink NIC locally - the DFE528TX and DFE538TX, but what's the difference between them? How do I know that these are not going to put a strain on the CPU aswell? Also - they're not even listed on DLink's site (only DFE 530TX+). The 528 isn't even featured in the drivers section.
 
Brian, thanks for the article. But I don't find it very helpful on the CPU usage side of things. I understand that he was using a RAM drive to provide the data, but 100% CPU usage on a 500MHz CPU for the majoirty of the cards? I don't get it..

One thing is bizzare though - the cards he reviewed in mid-2001 still make up the current line-up of NICs for some of the companies - namely DLink, Netgear and Linksys (didn't check the others). So basically the 100Mbps cards they (and we) have now are like 3 years old.
 
Originally posted by: mooojojojo
Brian, thanks for the article. But I don't find it very helpful on the CPU usage side of things. I understand that he was using a RAM drive to provide the data, but 100% CPU usage on a 500MHz CPU for the majoirty of the cards? I don't get it..

One thing is bizzare though - the cards he reviewed in mid-2001 still make up the current line-up of NICs for some of the companies - namely DLink, Netgear and Linksys (didn't check the others). So basically the 100Mbps cards they (and we) have now are like 3 years old.
Click to expand...

Well, you have to understand, you're never going to stress the CPU like he did in his article in a real world scenario. The load on the CPU is not NIC, but rather in the transfer, read, and write of the data. You will note, the higher the CPU usage, the higher the performance, which is what you want since at that moment in time, that's your bottleneck. Excluding wireless technology, NICs really haven't advanced that much in years primarily because there's very little improvement room given the existing methods of data transfer.

In any case, I wouldn't worry about it. Just pick up a Linksys, DLink, Netgear, or whatever's on sale at your local electronics store. They're all roughly the same these days.
 
As far as NIC settings go, leave the card on the default settings to start out. If your performance sucks, or if you have dropped connections, or if you go into the Event Log in windows and see Rdr errors, then force the NIC to 100 full on the computer and the port to 100 full on the router. Some NIC cards have trouble with their autosensing capabilities, specifically Compaq cards. Leave the other settings alone for now.

Good luck,

Mike
 
A standard is a standard is a standard. Once they were done in silicon there will be no changes. Until there's another standard ie: Gigabit. Then the same applies.

Something tnteresting is Ethernet as broadband. Think about it.
 
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