Vista - poor network performance even on x-over cable with FTP

HI Guys

im trying to get HD stuff to stream and its jerky as hell so, in order to rule out the network I dropped back to a x-over ethernet cable with the server direct to a device (I tried a laptop and a HD media player). However, this was still jerky. So, next step, I put a free FTP server on the server and then tried to connect via FTP and copy over the file. The best I could get was 11meg a second.

For the life of me, in my simple view of things, all seems good so, I thought i'd ask the experts for tips. Please take a quick look at the specs below and see if you can see why I'm only getting 11meg and im open to suggestions!

Desktop(Ftp server)->x-over->Laptop(Ftp client) = 11meg a second
Desktop(Ftp server)->homeplug(bedroom)->Laptop(Ftp client) = 4meg a second

Ouch. So none of these are particuly good considering the direct connection with nothing in the middle.


The PC's specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @3.00
Ram 4gb
Vista Home Premium 64
Boot disks SATA1: 2xWD Raptors (stripe)
Storage SATA2: 2x Hitachi 1TB disks (stripe)

Important bit?:
Generic Marvell Yukon 88E8056 Ethernet Controller
Settings below, any ideas?

• Flow control - TX/RX Enabled
• Interrupt Moderation - Enabled
• IPv4 Checksum Rx Enabled
• Jumbo Packet - 1514 (smallest option, cant disable)
• Large Send Offload (IPv4) - Disabled
• Max IRQ per sec - 10,000
• Priority & VLAN - Priority and VLAN Disabled
• Receive Buffers - 512
• Speed & Duplex - Auto-Negotiation (tried forcing 100/full)
• TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Tx & Rx Enabled
• Transmit Buffers - 256
• UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Tx & Rx Enabled

The devices connect at 100meg but I can't see where to see if this is Full duplex or not.

So, any ideas? I'm really struggling.... and very confused :4-dontkno
Thanks in advance!