Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter - 82574L - Locking Up?

[idata]

Hello,

I am currently experiencing a very odd issue with this adapter on windows server 2012 datacenter edition.

Please keep in mind i do not have access to the bios at this point, if any information from there is needed i MUST go to the datacenter.

Before i state the problem, here is some background information:

Server is actually built on consumer hardware to support Natural Selection 2 (game). Being full LUA based, this game requires CPU clock rates of 4.4GHz and above to support a 24 player game. There is no multithreading (uses just 2 CPUs max, one at max and one occasionally)

Server hardware:

CPU: Intel i7 3770K Ivy Bridge OC'd to 4.4 GHz

Storage: Samsung 250GB 840 Series 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD)

Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 9-9-9-24 DDR3-1600

Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth Z77

Cooling: Noctua NH-C14 heatsink + a ton of other case and auxiliary fans.

The system has been thoroughly tested and pushed to the max for several weeks before being put in production. (network was the only one that was NOT tested since it wasn't at the datacenter until this week)

First, the integrated network card (82579V intel chipset) does not work with server 2012 (no drivers available) so i was forced to buy an alternative with drivers compatible with server 2012. After calling intel pre-sales team and talking to someone there, I purchased a Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter (since it's listed as an entry level network card for servers as well). Before i purchased it i even tried to force install the 82579V integrated adapter, but it would not accept any speeds over 10mbps. It's now disabled from bios.

Ok, now here's the issue:

Randomly throughout the day, whenever i have a full server (24 players or so), game starts lagging. Pings go to 9999 for everyone. When this is going on, i CANNOT access the server at all (times out), and pinging it is hit and miss, 9/10 pings time out. It eventually goes back to normal within 5 minutes and operates fine for a while. This happened twice tonight. After the first time i tried to tweak some settings and it made it worse, first incident was within 30 minutes of the changes. (disabled inter-frame spacing, changed flow control to off from tx and rx enabled, intrerrupt moderation rate was set to low from auto). I'm not sure if the second interruption was caused by the settings being changed, it could have been random.

A pingpath during the interruption returned (note, i changed some IPs to *** for privacy reasons):

Tracing route to ***.com [***]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

0 ***-PC [192.168.10.3]

1 192.168.10.1

2 ***.hsd1.il.comcast.net [***]

3 te-0-2-0-1-sur03.elmhurst.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.86.115.241]

4 te-2-8-0-13-ar01.area4.il.chicago.comcast.net [69.139.185.205]

5 he-3-6-0-0-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.95.9]

6 pos-1-6-0-0-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.87.130]

7 comcast02.chi.*** [***]

8 ***.com [***]

Computing statistics for 200 seconds...

Source to Here This Node/Link

Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address

0 ***-PC [192.168.10.3]

84/ 100 = 84% |

1 0ms 85/ 100 = 85% 1/ 100 = 1% 192.168.10.1

0/ 100 = 0% |

2 14ms 85/ 100 = 85% 1/ 100 = 1% ***.hsd1.il.comcast.net [***]

0/ 100 = 0% |

3 13ms 85/ 100 = 85% 1/ 100 = 1% te-0-2-0-1-sur03.elmhurst.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.86.115.241]

0/ 100 = 0% |

4 21ms 84/ 100 = 84% 0/ 100 = 0% te-2-8-0-13-ar01.area4.il.chicago.comcast.net [69.139.185.205]

0/ 100 = 0% |

5 22ms 84/ 100 = 84% 0/ 100 = 0% he-3-6-0-0-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.95.9]

0/ 100 = 0% |

6 15ms 84/ 100 = 84% 0/ 100 = 0% pos-1-6-0-0-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.87.130]

0/ 100 = 0% |

7 22ms 84/ 100 = 84% 0/ 100 = 0% comcast02.chi.*** [***]

1/ 100 = 1% |

8 19ms 85/ 100 = 85% 0/ 100 = 0% ***.com [***]

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this, what settings i can change, and if this is really network card related?

Is there any information i can provide in addition to this to allow further troubleshooting of this issue?

Thanks in advance!?

[idata]

Swapped card with a NC112T (literally identical hardware, same chipset, same PCB, same everything, even the factory logo was the same) and it works fantastic so far. This tells me that either the intel drivers are bad or i got an intel card with some hardware issue...

[idata]

It's been a few days now, and still working strong. It was definitely related to intel drivers or bad hardware.