Vista - Realtek NIC card Advanced Settings? Help!

Hi~

I use an on board NIC card that comes with my Gigabyte MoBo, which is fine.

My Question is:: How do I adjust these Advanced Setting for Maximum

Performance

Speed, I want my Connection as Fast as Possible and have NO clue HOW TO SET

these Advanced Setting shown here::



I run Vista HP 64bit with Sp2.

Big Thanks IN advance!!

It's a Realtek RTL81688/811B (don't think that has anything to do with my

Question), but thought I'd include the info.

Blue

Short answer - leave 'em alone cos the defaults are what you'd want in 99% of cases

All of the "offload" settings should be enabled, but they probably already are. Don't enable the "interrupt moderation" one because that will throttle the network stack in order to decrease processor utilisation.

Thanks H2SO4

I disabled the "interrupt moderation" as you sad, but I don't understand what you mean by {All of the "offload" settings should be enabled} could you maybe be more specific, I'd be Grateful.

I'm Horrible with Networking Stuff, I admit it.

Thank You!!

Blue

I gave you a REP point too, BTW....

You actually gave me six rep points, so thank you

Overall, I would advise you not to modify these settings away from their defaults because that can sometimes cause weird symptoms which may not be obvious and easy to troubleshoot. Instead, if you think there's a problem with your machine's networking, perhaps you could explain what you're observing and someone may be able to help. Otherwise, if you simply want a speed boost, a better ISP or a higher-performing internet plan is pretty much the only way to fo.

As for the settings themselves...

Interrupt moderation - whenever the NIC hardware notices that it has received an inbound packet, it has to invoke the OS and driver code for dealing with the situation. The way it does that is by issuing an "interrupt" which literally diverts the system (very briefly) from whatever else it may have been doing and causes the packet reception routines to run. If the machine is receiving hundreds or even thousands of packets per second - which is by no means abnormal - the combined processor hit can be substantial, so "interrupt moderation" causes the NIC to hold its interrupts and batch them together once it has received a certain number of packets, at its own discretion. Disabling moderation causes each incoming packet to immediately trigger an interrupt. That can have a positive effect on the speed of network transfers, but it also means sacrificing processor cycles which would otherwise be spent elsewhere. (To be honest, Realtek is like the McDonalds of NIC vendors, and it's entirely possible that your NIC is not capable of moderation in the first place.)

TCP Checksum Offload - every packet that's leaving your machine has fields for "checksum" values in several of the protocol headers. Think of it as parity information. When the recipient on the other end of the network link receives packets from your machine, the first thing it does is to run the same checksum algorithm over the packet contents, and then compare the result to the info in the packet's "checksum" field. If the two don't match, it concludes that the packet has been corrupted en route, and the packet is unceremoniously dumped. Hence, calculating the correct checksum for each outgoing packet is an important task. It's also a computationally expensive task, in the sense that the OS/processor has to do a fair amount of work to calculate one or more checksums (on different protocol layers) for each outgoing packet. That's where "checksum offload" steps in - it leaves it up to the NIC hardware to calculate outgoing packet checksums, thus freeing up the processor(s) for other tasks.

IP checksum offload - same thing, different protocol layer.

UDP checksum offload - same again.

Note that these settings are in the Device Manager and not in the "networking" control applet. That's because they control low-level NIC behaviour and not its networking stack settins.

Thanks Again H2SO4

It's not that I'm having issues, really, I'm not. I just wanted to know what all this

Mumbo Jumbo, means, LOL!!

You explained things very well, again Thanks!!

At least now I have an idea of what the Heck is going on!! As I said networking

is my Weakest PC area. So I may or may not fiddle around in there, it appears to me

the Default settings are probably pretty much Best. Now I'm afraid to touch the

settings, if at all. Boy you sure know your Stuff about this TOPIC!! WOW!!

I'll post again, if I screw everything up!! I now know I'm fine though.

Which is all I wanted to know, that and what all this stuff does.

Peace!!

Blue

McDonald's!! LOL!!

Yeah, the default settings in this area are fine for almost all situations

The McDonalds comment was not meant to be harsh. The machine on which I'm sitting also has a Realtek NIC. They're "consumer oriented" though - you'd almost never see that brand in server hardware, and that's because its capabilities are limited with respect to much of the fancier functionality.

You probably don't want to be paying $1000 for a server NIC though, just because it's got better offload. I know I don't. There are far better ways to improve the performance of a home system (faster processors, more RAM...).

Well I think 8 GIG's of Ram should be ok for Vista. It runs like a Swiss watch Honestly. I checked the connection at Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test and it seems fine?

So I'm ok, unless you think that site is bad??

Look, is this acceptable??



Let me know?? Please, by all means.

Blue

Edit:: That's San Francisco to LA. USA.

Given your numbers are approximately 6 times better than mine (to my local node), you'll get nothing but sullen envy from me on this topic

Seriously, your machine is fine. There's nothing wrong with its networking and 8GB is plenty.

Thank You H2SO4

It's my Baby, a Labor of LOVE, So to Speak. I could clock my CPU faster, but why??

It's just fine the way it is, though I'm waiting on the GTX 300 Series cards.

I was going to get the GTX 275 FTW EvGa GFX card, but, my 260 is Great for now.

Then there's that Money thing!! LOL!! Always an obstacle

I just installed SP2 for Vista HP 64bit and it runs even better, IMHO.

Blue

i have a gigabyte motherboard also and find no problem with my NIC, in speed test i usualy get close to max on my internet connection. i am only on 5MB line though