[SOLVED] Installed a 10Gb network card in a new PC and got speeds slower than the motherboard 1Gb connection

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jozeftierney

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May 4, 2018
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I ran several "Lan speed test" tests before installing a 10 Gb network card into a brand new PC and the read and write scores are less than half the scores before the switch.

System:
Windows 10 Pro
ASUS Z390 Prime motherboard
i7-9700k processor
64GB corsair vengeance DDR4 RAM
Nvidia Quadro 4000
2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 2280 1TB NVMe SSDs in raid 1
10Gtek X520-DA1 10Gb network card

The network card was bought for our windows 2016 server but we ended up switching it for the 2 port version almost instantly. Installing the card was simple, it was immediately recognized and under connection properties it shows up as a 10 Gb connection. It is connected to a 10Gb port on our cisco SG500-52 managed switch and which is also connected to a Synology RS818+ NAS (also over a 10Gb connection) housing 4 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf pro 4TB HDDs in RAID 10. The network location the test points to is on the NAS and I know the HDDs are going to limit our speeds but you'd expect the 10Gb card to work at least as well as the 1Gb.

I've checked for driver updates and possible differences in the settings, I went through the settings in Intel's network adapter software (which also properly saw the device as a 10Gb card) but I can't find any reason why this would be worse than the 1Gb connection. I also checked our switch's management portal to confirm that the port was set to 10Gb. It is also worth noting the connection between the computer and the switch is CAT6 cable, 10Gtek 10GBase-TX transceivers rated for 10Gb speeds are used on both ends as the adapter and switch ports are both SFP+.

Across multiple tests with different packet sizes using LAN Speed Test the 1Gb connection averaged out around 700 Mbps write and 860 Mbps read while the 10Gb connection averaged around 300 Mbps write and 610 Mbps read.

My only thought is that the card being intended for a server could have some effect but I'm not really sure. I even tried the card in another computer and saw no difference and tried connecting to another PC with SSDs instead of the NAS and got even worse speeds.

Digging around on the internet hasn't gotten me anything, any insight people could give would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if I missed any relevant information.
 

rgd1101

Don't
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which slot did you put the card at?

if you use the 3rd one
*4 The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with SATA_5 and SATA_6. The PCIe x16_3 is default set at x2 mode.
 

jozeftierney

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May 4, 2018
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which slot did you put the card at?

if you use the 3rd one
*4 The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with SATA_5 and SATA_6. The PCIe x16_3 is default set at x2 mode.

That's a good catch but I have a Z390-P, not Z390-A.


The difference here being there are only 2 PCIex16 slots on mine. I have it in the second which is apparently x4 max according to the specifications page. Would this have an effect on the network card functionality?
 
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