XG-C100C in ROG STRIX Z790-H Gaming

[Orias]

Hi all, 

I recently installed the Asus XG-C100C 10GB PCIe card in my system so that I can make full use of my 10GB internet (as the built-in NIC only gets to 2.5GbE). With the card installed, Windows is now registering the connection as 10GB/10GB which is good (previously registered 2500/2500 with the built-in NIC). However, when I do a speed test, I only seem to get around 2500-2800 download and about 6000 upload.

I have set the NIC settings to Full Duplex 10GB and turned on Jumbo Packets to the max, but is there anything else I'm missing. The only other thing that I think could be a problem is the actual PCIe slot that I have the card in. The Z790-H has 3 x PCIe slots, one is PCIe 5.0 x16, but that's where my GPU is. The 2nd one is PCIe 4.0 x16, but it's one of those small form-factor PCI slots that the NIC won't fit into. Which leaves me with the only slot left to me, which is a PCIe 3.0 x1.... could that be the problem? If it is, I'm a bit stuck as I have nowhere else to put the NIC, unless there is some kind of adapter available that will allow me to install it in the small PCIe 4.0 slot somehow.

Forgot to mention that I am using a 10m Cat 8 cable, so hopefully that's not an issue

Cheers, Ori

[Orias · Accepted solution]

Well, it seems like I've answered my own question....

Solution: Uninstall Asus GameFirst VI. As soon as I did that, my speeds went to 8000/8000, which is what I expected, as the ISP said they reserve about 2000/2000 for network management (or something like that).

But that certainly seems to be the issue!

[Frelanhardware]

Hey Orias, glad you were able to figure it out yourself! Uninstalling Asus GameFirst VI seems like a weird culprit, but hey, if it fixes the speed who can argue?

Just a heads up for others who might run into this, it's definitely worth checking for any background software that might be interfering with network performance.

On another note, good call on the Cat 8 cable. Futureproofing for sure!

[Orias]

Heheh, indeed! I've always been a bit suspicious of GameFirst and it's claims about sorting out my network performance etc. I never had an issue when I was just using the built-in 2.5GbE NIC, and my speeds were more or less bang-on 2500/2500. It was only when I installed the 10GbE NIC that I noticed an issue. Just figured there was no harm in trying to uninstall it and seeing what happens.... and boom, problem solved.

I then did some reading around, and there does seem to be a general consensus that GameFirst is a bad thing, but I guess it depends very much on your system and your needs. And yes, figured I would just put Cat8 cable in as internet speeds where I am seem to increase pretty fast, so better to future proof if I can 😁

Cheers!