Intel 82579V LAN Chipset Issue – 479 days old

[ZemaTalon]

There's an issue with the Intel 82579V onboard LAN chipset used on some P67 motherboards, at least on a number of Asus boards, including the Asus P67 Sabertooth which I'm using in my Win7 gaming machine. I've noticed for a while that it would occasionally very briefly loose connectivity and immediately re-establish the connection. Then it started to become more frequent, and started to occasionally interfere with some things - like when moving around within Steam. It didn't seem to have much impact on streaming video though. At first I thought it was a problem with the VirtualBox bridged network adaptor, since every time it occurred, it switched to that interface. So I finally decided to try to fix it. It wasn't the VB adaptor though. I spent about two hours struggling with it, changing cat5 cables, switches etc, nothing worked. I came across a thread at the Intel forums where a lot of folks were having the same issue. It's been going on for quite some time without a solution. Some solved it by fixing their connection speed at 10mbps, and others by just disabling the onboard NIC and installing a PCI NIC. So I dug up a couple NIC's I had. Both were pretty old, so I didn't expect any trouble getting them to work, but the first one absolutely would not work with Win7 even though Windows had found a driver for it (I temporarily left the onboard one enabled for that purpose). But that one had an odd ball chipset. So then I tried the other one. This one turned out to be just an ordinary Realtek NIC and Windows had no trouble finding drivers for it. I tried a streaming video while watching the network connections, and when the onboard NIC went out Windows auto switched to the Realtek NIC without any interruption in the video. So I'll just disable the onboard one until Intel gets around to fixing it. Sure glad I had something on hand that worked

[Grogan]

I have given up on onboard NICs... my last two computers I've ended up disabling them and using a good old fashioned RTL8139 based PCI card. (That's what I'm using now, one of the good old D-Link DFE-538TX cards. The newer ones are Via Rhine III, which I hate)

The first one was a stupid Marvell Yukon that had problems in Linux. It probably got fixed, but I just never trusted it again. I've since sold the computer and it's not a problem for the owner in Windows 7.

The current one is Realtek 8169 on board gigabit ethernet and it's just lovely under Linux. Not a problem at all. Windows does stupid things to it though, and it doesn't reinitialize properly sometimes. (It tries to be too clever with power management). I tried new drivers from Realtek a few times, and mostly mitigated the problem with the advanced settings of the adapter, forcing it not to do those things, but eventually just gave up on it. I was tired of having to completely power down the computer (the router would not again negotiate a 100mb connection unless the port reset completely... I even had to power down the router a few times because of it. That was the last straw.)

I will not put up with any rubbish from an ethernet controller. At the first sign of trouble, that's it for an onboard NIC, forever.

[ZemaTalon]

This one's a Realtek 8139/810x Seems like there's been a lot more stuff like this with hardware the last several years, but maybe it's just me

[ZemaTalon]

Out of curiosity I just checked the Windows update history to see if that onboard NIC got a recent driver update, since it used to seem to work ok. I didn't find an Intel NIC driver update in there, but I did find an entry for "Intel - Other hardware - Intel(R) Management Engine Interface". I also saw that that first NIC, the other one I tried that wouldn't work, was an Infineon AN983B.

[ZemaTalon]

Turns out, this problem is complicated by another problem I discovered only after installing a PCI NIC - the HAF-X cases are plagued with poor-aligning slots, such that it's impossible to seat a card in the reg PCI slot and secure it. If you secure it, it works itself out of the slot. I had to slightly bend the face plate of the NIC card to keep it in, but it still works its way back out of the slot. Coolermaster has no solution for this, and there are 6 months of people still complaining. Too late to send it back, and sending it back would cost about $45. And people who have sent back new cases had a long wait only to end up with a refurb. As much as I like these Coolermaster cases, I don't think I'll be buying one again. I absolutely detest shoddy workmanship like this. I'll be going with something higher quality like a Lin Lan next time. Eventually I'll have to tear it down to try and fix it myself. In the meantime I found a cheap temporary solution - an external NIC - plugs into a USB port. That should keep this machine online until I can straighten things out.

[Grogan]

Buy a PCI Express 1000Mbit card. You know those little PCI-E slots they give you? Guess what? You can use them! What a deal

(PCI-E x2 cards can be plugged into x8 or x16 slots as well if you have to... if you need to line up with a particular opening in the case where it aligns properly etc.)

The cards are getting to be more common place. I even see them in stores in bumfuckville where I live.

[ZemaTalon]

Problem is I don't know if one of them would stay seated either, and being that short, it'd likely take even less tension to pull it out.

[Grogan]

OK, I thought it was just down near the bottom of the case where they put that bridged PCI slot on the motherboards. The one slot that won't line up. Your video card seats properly, so it's not like the whole frame is out of whack.

[Dark Angel]

Dremel or equivalent. If the cards go in at all they're not inches out of alignment so shaving a few thou off in the right places should stop cards from popping out. Alternatively if the spacing between slots is fine but they're just slightly out wrt to the mobo you might be lucky and that panel can be removed by popping the rivets out and slightly tweaking how it mounts.

[ZemaTalon]

Yeah video card wasn't as bad, though I remember it didn't go in quite as freely as it should have but not real bad. Plus it has the lock to help keep it from backing out. When a card is seated in the reg PCI slot the screw holes are out of alignment by just enough to make the corresponding holes 'next' to each other rather than directly centred. It has three PCI-E x2 slots, with one of them above the top PCI-E x16 slot, maybe that one would work, assuming the alignment gets worse towards the bottom. Might just be a good excuse to finally invest in a Dremel, actually

[Fingerle]

Done a lot of strange things over the years to get a card to sit right when the bracket doesn't line up as it should. Most is just what was needed for spacers for brackets that were too tall. Then the few other times some creative modifications were required.

[Michael_Horatio]

Buy a PCI Express 1000Mbit card. You know those little PCI-E slots they give you? Guess what? You can use them! What a deal

(PCI-E x2 cards can be plugged into x8 or x16 slots as well if you have to... if you need to line up with a particular opening in the case where it aligns properly etc.)

The cards are getting to be more common place. I even see them in stores in bumfuckville where I live.

I had that same problem as Zema with cutouts on a couple of asus boards I have here, especially my main rig. I grabbed three of these:

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=37926&...ufacture=Intel

and installed them in all the desktops I have here..
very nice, no problems/cutouts and blazing fast transfers on the LAN...

like you, I don't like relying on onboard nics (for my own stuff anyway)

[Grogan]

Good to know. Intel generally makes good NICs (onboard too)