Increase online gaming performance by tinkering with Ethernet card driver.

[mondblut]

Would that make streaming porn faster? Screw online gayming.

(still disabled "green ethernet", because fuck treehuggers)

 

[shihonage]

I don't notice any changes whatsoever on my Realtek ethernet card.

You're not going to notice changes unless you use software that relies on multiple small packets sent with low latency requirements.

mondblut Throughput may increase depending on driver manufacturer and version. There's no universal rule. The idea is to turn everything off, leaving the NIC to be just a data pipe, one that doesn't double-guess the actions of Windows networking stack.

 

[Surf Solar]

This improved my ping by 12, now sitting at a whopping 10 ping to my favorite server. Awesome @shinoage and thanks for posting it! :D

 

[ftlklr]

I CAN GUARANTEE!!! THIS IS FUCKING HOT! IT REALLY WORKS.

On one of my computers, i was getting 0.5MBps of upload rates. After doing above tweaks it started getting 4.5 (the actual upload rate i have with my isp)!!! THANK YOU MAN!!!

 

[Billsfan]

For months, I've been driven nuts by certain behavior of Tribes: Ascend. When using fast-firing weapons, like machine guns, it seemed like my bullets, despite having 31ms ping, would clump together, and not quite fire off at the time they were fired.

Doing deeper research, I came to the conclusion that many Ethernet adapters come with features enabled by default which mess with Windows networking stack. This is particularly betrayed by optimizations instructions for various realtime daytrading software, which relies on latency and minimization of errors. Those instructions tell you to turn a whole lot of that stuff off.

Not only are many implementations of these features flawed and differ from driver to driver, and should be turned off for that reason alone... but they are harmful even when implemented correctly.

Moreso, it turns out that a number of these features are controversial and some were even acknowledged by Microsoft to have questionable usability.

I disabled all of this stuff and now I no longer feel like other people in the game have mysterious godlike evasion powers.

In short, if you want the optimal online gaming experience, go to Advanced tab of your Ethernet adapter settings, and disable the following:

* Interrupt Moderation - clumps packets together and sends them as a batch - the main offender
* Flow Control - sounds counterintuitive to disable it, but it messes with existing flow control in Windows networking stack
* Receive Side Scaling - also messes with Windows networking stack
* [anything goes here] Checksum Offload - supposed to speed up performance by offloading TCP/UDP checksumming to hardware; in reality does nothing for an average desktop PC except interfere with Windows networking stack
* Green Ethernet - performance-eating eco garbage

Try it and see! Less rubberbanding zombies in Left4Dead, more headshots in your favorite FPS, etc etc.

Also, if you play a MMORPG and want faster responsiveness, you need to disable TCP/IP Nagle algorithm in Windows. There are multiple guides about it though.

I joined this site just so I could respond to your thread here because it is amazing. I know this thread is super old and you probably won't see this anyway but I simply had to say something about it. I have been struggling with substandard connectivity for a while now, basically low max speeds and "upside down" throughput (Upload higher than Download). This was causing VPN connectivity issues with work (I work from home). Decided it could be my old onboard NIC and the cheap Netgear gateway I was using. Took a "Technical Leave" from work to try and fix the issue. "Bridged" my old gateway and connected with new CAT 7 cabling to new and very beastly ASUS router, ran more CAT 7 to new and equally beastly dual port PCI-E server NIC. Ran "speedtest"...Still super slow and still "upside down" WTF? This prompted about 2 hours of searching the internet trying to figure out where I went wrong including Microsoft, ASUS, and my new NIC's websites. None of their "advice" fixed the issue. Was about to complain to NIC manufacturer about their "defective" product when I stumbled across this thread. Your advice here was to paraphrase: "It's all crap anyway, just shut it off". Hmm, why not? Tried everything else, I literally had to scroll to shut off all the "cool" features on new NIC. Tested again...Furthest server speed went from 7 Mbps to 66....Closest (optimal) server went from 40-50 to 162 Mbps on a 150 Mbps connection...And no longer "upside down"! Amazing! This solution should be stamped right on the front of this website. Now that everything's working as it should I am looking at beastly ASUS router config and it states that I can link 2 Ethernet ports together, also says this is possible on dual port server NIC. Should I just "leave well enough alone" before I break something? Or would pairing 2 ports gain some performance? Thanks very much if you've read this far and yeah, this solution needs some more "publicity" I think, I am sure I am not the only one with this issue.

 

[shihonage]

I joined this site just so I could respond to your thread here because it is amazing. I know this thread is super old and you probably won't see this anyway but I simply had to say something about it. I have been struggling with substandard connectivity for a while now, basically low max speeds and "upside down" throughput (Upload higher than Download). This was causing VPN connectivity issues with work (I work from home). Decided it could be my old onboard NIC and the cheap Netgear gateway I was using. Took a "Technical Leave" from work to try and fix the issue. "Bridged" my old gateway and connected with new CAT 7 cabling to new and very beastly ASUS router, ran more CAT 7 to new and equally beastly dual port PCI-E server NIC. Ran "speedtest"...Still super slow and still "upside down" WTF? This prompted about 2 hours of searching the internet trying to figure out where I went wrong including Microsoft, ASUS, and my new NIC's websites. None of their "advice" fixed the issue. Was about to complain to NIC manufacturer about their "defective" product when I stumbled across this thread. Your advice here was to paraphrase: "It's all crap anyway, just shut it off". Hmm, why not? Tried everything else, I literally had to scroll to shut off all the "cool" features on new NIC. Tested again...Furthest server speed went from 7 Mbps to 66....Closest (optimal) server went from 40-50 to 162 Mbps on a 150 Mbps connection...And no longer "upside down"! Amazing! This solution should be stamped right on the front of this website. Now that everything's working as it should I am looking at beastly ASUS router config and it states that I can link 2 Ethernet ports together, also says this is possible on dual port server NIC. Should I just "leave well enough alone" before I break something? Or would pairing 2 ports gain some performance? Thanks very much if you've read this far and yeah, this solution needs some more "publicity" I think, I am sure I am not the only one with this issue.

Thank you, I'm glad this helped you. Somehow I suspect that even a single Ethernet port on your router exceeds your maximum download/upload speeds, so I doubt there will be a significant boost. I don't have hands-on experience with such a configuration, but often things that are too complicated, end up having side-effects. Whenever possible I try to stick to scenarios which were the most likely to be tested in QA

NIC programmers are given cheap, weak onboard chips and mandated to do "programming magic" with them. No wonder so many features malfunction... it's better to just let Windows handle them.

Possible exception to the rule is Intel NICs, which seem to actually work as intended. Though for gaming purposes Interrupt Moderation, Flow Control and RSS should be still disabled on them.

 

[Billsfan]

I joined this site just so I could respond to your thread here because it is amazing. I know this thread is super old and you probably won't see this anyway but I simply had to say something about it. I have been struggling with substandard connectivity for a while now, basically low max speeds and "upside down" throughput (Upload higher than Download). This was causing VPN connectivity issues with work (I work from home). Decided it could be my old onboard NIC and the cheap Netgear gateway I was using. Took a "Technical Leave" from work to try and fix the issue. "Bridged" my old gateway and connected with new CAT 7 cabling to new and very beastly ASUS router, ran more CAT 7 to new and equally beastly dual port PCI-E server NIC. Ran "speedtest"...Still super slow and still "upside down" WTF? This prompted about 2 hours of searching the internet trying to figure out where I went wrong including Microsoft, ASUS, and my new NIC's websites. None of their "advice" fixed the issue. Was about to complain to NIC manufacturer about their "defective" product when I stumbled across this thread. Your advice here was to paraphrase: "It's all crap anyway, just shut it off". Hmm, why not? Tried everything else, I literally had to scroll to shut off all the "cool" features on new NIC. Tested again...Furthest server speed went from 7 Mbps to 66....Closest (optimal) server went from 40-50 to 162 Mbps on a 150 Mbps connection...And no longer "upside down"! Amazing! This solution should be stamped right on the front of this website. Now that everything's working as it should I am looking at beastly ASUS router config and it states that I can link 2 Ethernet ports together, also says this is possible on dual port server NIC. Should I just "leave well enough alone" before I break something? Or would pairing 2 ports gain some performance? Thanks very much if you've read this far and yeah, this solution needs some more "publicity" I think, I am sure I am not the only one with this issue.

Thank you, I'm glad this helped you. Somehow I suspect that even a single Ethernet port on your router exceeds your maximum download/upload speeds, so I doubt there will be a significant boost. I don't have hands-on experience with such a configuration, but often things that are too complicated, end up having side-effects. Whenever possible I try to stick to scenarios which were the most likely to be tested in QA

NIC programmers are given cheap, weak onboard chips and mandated to do "programming magic" with them. No wonder so many features malfunction... it's better to just let Windows handle them.

Possible exception to the rule is Intel NICs, which seem to actually work as intended. Though for gaming purposes Interrupt Moderation, Flow Control and RSS should be still disabled on them.

Hey!...Thanks for responding. Didn't check back here for a bit cause the site states that if you are a new member no one will see your first posts until they are "moderated". You are correct about Intel, 1st thing I did was to check with the guy who runs my work VPN and the first thing he said was to make sure I got an Intel NIC so that I wouldn't have any issues. The trouble with that is that for some reason Intel still doesn't have Win10 drivers for any of their consumer products yet (I dual boot Win7x64 for personal and Win10 Enterprise for work), so to be safe I had to get a non-Intel product with dual "Realtek" chips onboard. Just to update you on the question I asked about "pairing" ports, didn't expect to hear back from you for a bit so eventually curiosity got the better of me. I did not use the "pairing" function on the ASUS or the NIC, I just connected another CAT 7 cable from a separate Ethernet port on the ASUS to the unused port on the NIC, and since the device appears in 'Device Manager" as 2 separate NIC's I "turned off" all the "features" on that one as well. Testing showed furthest server speed up from 66 to 116 Mbps, closest (Optimal) server speed up from 162 to 172 Mbps on 150 Mbps connection. Have no certain idea why but some websites have said that cards like this will default to using one NIC for downloads and the other for uploads when configured this way thereby making them "more efficient". I am not certain if that is true or not but I can absolutely confirm the result. All I have left to do now is boot into Win10 (all install and testing done on Win 7x64 so far) and hope Microsoft doesn't instantly jam their own driver onto it instead of letting me use the one that came with the card, I'll probably disconnect my internet connection when I try it just to hopefully prevent that. Thanks again!

 

[PhantomEagle]

Wanted to suggest something that everyone would like to disable in their Ethernet Network Controller cards (Mine is Nvidia nForce), to improve their stability and decrease latency EVEN MORE (That is if it wasn't mentioned already lol).

-Priority & VLAN=Disabled

-Interrupt Moderation=Disabled (If you have a high end pc with a high end CPU, otherwise low end CPU's will not be able to handle so many packets being sent at the same time, though you will still have a fast connection from Disabling Priority & VLAN.)

This actually drastically increased stability and reliability on my connection, pings decreased alot, so try this out.

 

[shihonage]

Wanted to suggest something that everyone would like to disable in their Ethernet Network Controller cards (Mine is Nvidia nForce), to improve their stability and decrease latency EVEN MORE (That is if it wasn't mentioned already lol).

-Priority & VLAN=Disabled

-Interrupt Moderation=Disabled (If you have a high end pc with a high end CPU, otherwise low end CPU's will not be able to handle so many packets being sent at the same time, though you will still have a fast connection from Disabling Priority & VLAN.)

This actually drastically increased stability and reliability on my connection, pings decreased alot, so try this out.

Interrupt Moderation is packet aggregation, so it is the biggie, and the first thing I listed in my original post.

Priority&VLAN I find conflicting information about. I can't figure out if "Priority" means recognition of QoS packet tagging by Windows. It is possible to force QoS to "on" with TCP Optimizer even on a home network, and leave 20% bandwidth to "reserved", and I wonder if "Priority" is necessary to keep enabled in order for this to work.

The reason for QoS is to try and prevent LAN file transfers from choking LAN video streaming, for example.

 

[KulaGGin]

And there are more than just NIC options:
http://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812
http://www.speedguide.net/articles/network-adapter-optimization-3449

What do you think about it, guys?

 

[shihonage]

Anything like this for Wireless Modems?

Yes, actually for Wifi config in the router and the card itself. But there are many brands and settings.

 

[Carlostaco]

Thank you very much for this.
I have a realtek onboard that kept turning the internet on and off, now its stable.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Aaaand the problem solved itself. I hate this shit.