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#1
High network usage causes stuttering/latency (Possible X99 issue?)
Hi. So this is an issue that I have been trying to deal with for the past 12 months, and I have yet to find a true solution...
First, allow me to give a little backstory to this issue: I bought my first X99 platform motherboard and CPU around this time last year. I started out with a Gigabyte GA-X99-UD5 Wi-FI board paired with an Intel Core I7 5820K and 32GB DDR4 2133Mhz. I installed Windows 10 Pro x64 and everything was great. It was the fastest system I had ever used. Until ~2 months later...
Any kind of network traffic, local or otherwise, began to impact my PCs performance. It wasn't so bad at first, just minor stutters every now and then if I was watching a YouTube video, or transferring lots of files over my network. But it wasn't long before doing anything that involved network activity began to cripple my PC. Something as small as refreshing a webpage would cause my PC to struggle with even the most basic tasks, e.g. watching a video (a local video, not an online one).
I began to search for the culprit and narrowed it down to the ethernet adapter. I uninstalled/reinstalled the adapter drivers, I let Windows use it's own driver, and I even reinstalled Windows with the hope of fixing it. Re-installing the drivers did nothing. At all. Reinstalling windows made the issue disappear for maybe a week, and then it came back with a vengeance. At this point, I began to eliminate components from my system, such as hard drives, SSDs, RAM etc. I began to test each component independently until I found the culprit. I ran memtest for almost a week, hoping I had a bad RAM module. No such luck, they all passed. All of my Drives were fine too. Perhaps it's the CPU, I thought? Nope. I borrowed another 5820K and a Xeon from work, and they all had the same issue.
I knew, without a doubt, at this point that it was Ethernet Adapter related... I unplugged my network cable from the board and plugged it into the second adapter, and everything began to work as it should! I was relieved. I figured that it must have been a damaged Ethernet port, and it didn't matter because I had a spare. Nope, less than a week later, the same old symptoms arrived. I then installed a quad port Intel Ethernet PCI-e card that I had laying around, and the issue persisted. I hit up Google one last time, and I managed to find a post on another forum (that I haven't been able to find since) where several people were complaining about similar issues, and it had been narrowed down to Microsoft and Intel not working together to make a driver that works properly on the X99 platform. The solution offered there? Use a different Intel driver. I did, and the problem was still there.
I decided to RMA my board. I took it back to the retailer, and the person who I handed the board to barely even glanced at it and told me that I had several severely bent socket pins. I'm sorry, 16-year-old boy... But I have been involved in the computer industry longer than you have been alive. A small 'argument' ensued, pictures were taken of the socket as proof that no damage was present to the pins, and I signed the RMA form in the hopes that Gigabyte would figure out what my issue was and fix it. 5 weeks later I get a call from the store informing me that my board has been returned and is working again. I go to pick it up, and discover that Gigabyte had merely changed the socket. I know at this moment that I was going to have the same issue. Fast forward maybe 10 days and... stuttering.
I'd had enough now. I went out and bought another Motherboard, this time from MSI (I have had other issues with Gigabyte over the years, so them not fixing my issue was a warning sign that I should leave them behind and choose another preferred manufacturer). New CPU, new board, new SSD, new RAM... And I'm sat here struggling to even listen to spotify as I type this, because I made the mistake of trying to copy some files over to my NAS.
The only issue that I have found, that works for more than 10 days, is to use the old SpeedGuide TCP/IP optimizer program. That seems to sort my issue out for a couple of weeks. I do not believe this is solely a windows 10 issue, as all of my machines are running the same OS, 10 Pro x64, and I have never had an issue with them.
As much as I am hoping that someone can offer a solution, it would be great to hear that I am not the only person experiencing this. I have used several tools to record my latency , LatencyMon etc., and can confirm that the second I initiate any kind of network traffic, my latency goes through the roof. Process Explorer shows no problems as far as system resource usage goes. The only difference when I start a transfer or open a webpage etc. is I see the network graph moving, which is perfectly normal. But there are no CPU, RAM, GPU, or any other signs of something being amiss.
I apologize for such a lengthy post, but I wanted to eliminate as much as possible from the list of causes before people waste their time and tell me to RMA my board, or reinstall my network drivers etc.