Question Choosing an ethernet card for PCIe 2.0 x1 on a DDR3 system ?

[FreeBee101]

I have a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot on an old DDR3 system (board ethernet 100Mbits). Will any 2.5bgit ethernet card simply work without any considerations? I've seen them for around 13 dollars on new egg. Not sure if there is anything to consider like if they can use all the lanes both ways or not.

My on board is 100mbit. And I'm using what I assume is old ethernet 5 house wireing (it could be 6 though.). Are there any limits to this. I use At@T but I'm not sure what the service speed is atm.

I'm currently playing FF7 ever crisis and I'm noticing it loads forever. It's not the CPU as it barely spikes at 100% randomly (barely touches 100% and doesn't flatten out.) and it's not the 10603gb as it doesn't use over 50% vram and much less gpu usage. I'm assuming it's the internet speed unless the game just loads that slowly from their servers. I still have to look at the max speeds and my current plan. Did At@T go all fiber plans. If so the minimal speed is 300mbit now.

The problems is the game takes around 10-20 seconds whenever it loads a new screen. I can't tell if it's the game or the internet connection.

I was looking at something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/14U-0077-00025

I'm watching the CPU more carefully and starting to think that is the problem afterall. Although it's hard to tell.

 

[CountMike]

I have a pcie 2.0 x1 slot on an old DDR 3 system(board ethernet 100Mbits). Will any 2.5bgit ethernet card simply work without any considerations? I've seen them for around 13 dollars on new egg. Not sure if there is anything to consider like if they can use all the lanes both ways or not.

My on board is 100mbit. And I'm using what I assume is old ethernet 5 house wireing(it could be 6 though.). Are there any limits to this. I use At@T but I'm not sure what the service speed is atm.

I'm currently playing FF7 ever crisis and I'm noticing it loads forever. It's not the CPU as it barely spikes at 100% randomly (barely touches 100% and doesn't flatten out.) and it's not the 10603gb as it doesn't use over 50% vram and much less gpu usage. I'm assuming it's the internet speed unless the game just loads that slowly from their servers. I still have to look at the max speeds and my current plan. Did At@T go all fiber plans. If so the minimal speed is 300mbit now.

The problems is the game takes around 10-20 seconds whenever it loads a new screen. I can't tell if it's the game or the internet connection.

I was looking at something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/14U-0077-00025

I'm watching the CPU more carefully and starting to think that is the problem afterall. Although it's hard to tell.

Yes, any Ethernet card with PCIe should work hardware wise providing your windows have appropriate drivers for it.
Not familiar with that game. Is it fully online game, like playing thru a browser ? If not and most is installed on a disk it's usually the long ping that causes delays not actual download speed.
What are specs of your PC ?
Is there a mechanical HDD or an SSD ?
You can see what is happening in Task Manager>Network in windows, just let it run in the background, open it wide and look at the graph which will show you what is happening and if it coincides with slowdowns.
You can check the maximum internet speed with for instance https://www.speedtest.net/apps/desktop
but in my experience 100Mbps should be more than enough for any online games providing short ping. World of Warships for instance has 5-20Mbps connection.

 

[cruisetung]

It has nothing to do with your network speed. Replacing or upgrade your network from 100Mbps to 1Gbps or even 2.5Gbps will not solve your problem - slowness of the system

First, if you still use HDD, replace it with a SSD. And upgrade to 8GB if you only have 4GB

But the reality is that if you are still using DDR3 system, buy a new 100+ USD mini pc instead upgrading anything of your system is more practical,

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/final-fantasy-vii-ever-crisis/23062

Here are the FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS System Requirements (Minimum)​

• CPU: AMD A8-7600 / Intel® Core™ i3-3210
• RAM: 8 GB
• VIDEO CARD: AMD Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics / Intel® UHD Graphics 630 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750
• PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
• VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
• OS: Windows® 10 64-bit / Windows® 11
• FREE DISK SPACE: 30 GB

FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS Recommended Requirements​

• CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 3 1200 / Intel® Core™ i5-6400
• RAM: 8 GB
• VIDEO CARD: AMD Radeon™ RX 460 / Intel® Arc™ A380 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950
• DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB
• PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
• VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
• OS: Windows® 10 64-bit / Windows® 11
• FREE DISK SPACE: 30 GB

 

[FreeBee101]

Specs:

CPU: Phenom 1100t
GPU: 10603gb (doesn't go past 50-64% vram usage and around 12 percent GPU bandwidth according to nvidia tool.)
Ram: 32gb 1600mhz
HDD: Samsung 850 pro SSD

I have HDD's but the game is on the SSD. And the game has been fully downloaded.

The slowness is at one loading point before loading and after loading an entire area for combat/missions. And the CPU still doesn't show full usage most of the time. Mostly it peaks at 100% for a millisecond and the individual core shows a parabola and not squished up against the top. I'm confused as to what is causing the problem. Is the HDD too slow as this is a newer game? Or possibly the ram?

I was still wondering if it was network as the game still has to connect for some things even if it's on the PC. But it doesn't show a lot of immediate network activity even if it gets a lot over time for total usage in the several gigabytes received over time.

The game a full download option as it can download as needed. But I fully downloaded the entire game using the setting in the game to do it ahead of time.

I'm also using linux and steam to play it. But it doesn't have any compatibility applied atm. It's raw.

Edit: I'm getting around 66-75% max core usage while loading now. But it still takes 10 seconds to load. I'm wondering if it's the game. I did verify the files in steam. It's a bit snappier now. Must be a game issue. Or some of the files were messed up. (Some load screens it barely touches 100% then goes back down like a parabola.)

 

[cruisetung]

I don't play games. But you can watch internet usage using nload or bmon

I really don't think internet will affect your game play.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnnvAe9Ge7E

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZXKNNazfxg