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Intel NIC: Network throughput drops as CPU usage and overall system usage rises

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Mar 6, 2017
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System Name My Ryzen 7 7700X Super Computer
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
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OK, so this is a strange issue. I have Gigabit Intel NIC in my system, and it seems that as CPU usage rises and traffic on the PCIe bus increases due to write operations to the NVMe SSD, throughput drops on the NIC.

For instance, my Internet speeds are 500/500 but if I tell Steam to download a game one would expect it to keep downloading it as fast as possible, balls to the walls until the download is done. But that doesn't seem to be the case. It drops down multiple times during the download which I can only contribute to higher CPU usage and/or high traffic on the PCIe bus.

Is there anything I can do to optimize this?
 
On board? Dedicated?

In device manager do you have these options?

 
I would enable the features that allow unlimited driver interrupts if network throughput is a higher priority than whatever else is going on, any features related to load balancing on the CPU should be enabled. If it is still an issue more system info would help
 
Hi,
Yeah intel nic


 
With a few tweaks using the Intel ProSet utility, Steam is now downloading at a more consistent 70 MB/s which is far closer to the maximum rated speed of my Internet connection.

Edit: And it just hit 700 Mbps which is yeah, much better than it was performing before.
Edit #2: When you have fast FTTH Internet like I do and you don't see the kind of consistent performance that you think you should get, yeah... you start to wonder why.

Hi,
Yeah intel nic


Mine is a Intel I219-V.
 
Last edited:
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