Upgraded my TV server now have live tv stuttering/pixelation (1 Viewer)

[jonathantwynham]

Boom!!

Intel Pro/1000PT Server Adapter - I can be watching HD channels and run the network stress test and it doesnt stutter!!

This NIC has adaptive interupt control - according to the intel blurb it stores interupts and data on the card itself and when the system is free it sends one interupt and data in one go rather than many interupts and many packets! Looking at the card itself its not one of your run of the mill NIC's - it has its own memory and CPU!

I will report back and let you know if the issue reappears but so far it works perfectly.

 

[mm1352000]

Great!

[edit: Did you try the old NIC with the Dell driver?]

 

[jonathantwynham]

Hey. Sorry I didnt get back to you.

I did try the broadcom NIC with the Dell modified driver, it did appear to make it better when only watching on one client, when I had two clients on the go it did begin to stutter again. The Intel card doesnt have any issues with HD channels.. well so far!

 

[mm1352000]

No need to apologise - I was just curious. Thanks for the update.

 

[resa]

Nice to hear, that this interessting issue was solved somehow, even if wasting another NIC is not the perfect solution

Despite the fact you have solved already i like to clarify some details since you seem to be an pro-user (CAD?) and therefore you may prefer more complex/complete pro-informations if facing similar mess in the future. So i decided to shortly pass them over as pro as i am able to

[1]: All power management is set to maximum performance.

[2]: however in advanced settings for speed/duplex i can only force it to 10mb/100mb in full/half duplex - there is no option to force to 1gbit/full duplex for some reason - so i have left it as auto.

[1]: To clarify here, i was not only meaning the global power management options windows is offering, but also the power management options you can set on driver level per single device and is found only within the device-manager. As you can see ...here... there is also an tab called "Power Management" where you can allow or disallow windows to shut down the device if not used. Depending on the specific hardware and drivers used, this tab/option exists for many other devices too, even for storage controllers and those devices shown under the "System Devices" knot, like PCI-Express slots itselfs etc.

The problem is: Even if you globally set for maximum performance and also care about all the concealed "advanced options" reachable from power management panel, STILL Windows can and will disable devices temporarily at lowest=hardware level (what is not noticeable by user or soft above hw-level) because they are detected as being not in use. If such detection is made in error on an constantly used device, Win tends to fast-frequent disable and enable it in endless loop, what causes several kinds of system-lags and turns into endless safari for the reasons. Especially network devices and storage controllers are affected by this not-so-extremly-rare issues and in most cases this leads into unneccessary hardware replacements

To be complete: On top there can be some concealed energy options for NICs on the advanced tab too (if NIC is able for AND driver is smart enough to offer these options to the user). Regarding to "Energy Efficient Ethernet", "Green Ethernet" or similar terms nowadays numerous NICs are able to i.e. reduce signal strength = power consumption according the cable length; throttle bandwidth according the load; turn off signal on transmission paused etc, etc, etc. All these options are fine but can quickly turn into safari-trouble, if something is measured wrong or something is misinterpreted by the NIC/drivers/Win.

[2]: Unavailable setting for 1GBits fullduplex is nothing to worry about nor this is necessarily indicating driver problems at all. First you have to now that Gbit is fullduplex always and usually also is auto-negotiated always. It depends on drivers smartness if you are able to set for auto negotiation only or for fixed 1 Gbit fullduplex too (i.e. to prevent other things throttling bandwidth without users knowledge).

Already said above: I only wanted to be complete with this, so no further action is needed from you now urgently

...

But! If you feel like "XP=fine but 7=not" is an personal challenge to you (or wish to reclaim the Intel-NIC for better purposes) i like to add again the hint to have a deeper look for things like jumbo-frames, flow control and all the other settings on the advanced tab (some shown on the pic linked above). Next is: Maybe the 3 standard drivers (Windows-Update, Broadcom-Website, Dell-Website) simply fail to offer all possible options and exactly THAT option is missed to catch what Win7-default is doing different here So you can have a look for special maintenance tools among the downloads at Dell or Broadcom (i remember some control suite blahblah from Broadcom). And my last idea: Have a look for interrupt-issues. You can try to work them out by i.e. disable all unused devices in bios (i.e. FDD, IDE, unused SATA and/or RAID, 1394, ser, par, onboard sound/audio [mostly you can get audio via GFX-HDMI/DVI only too]), ensure that APIC is enabled (NO, not meaning ACPI), change slots or order of your expansion cards or try to somehow force manual interrupt assignment within bios and/or windows. Good luck on this if you like to try - Else if: Ignore this section

With the very best wishes for your further MePo-Career and best regards