Slow gigabit ethernet on VIA 686b southbridge based motherboard

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Slow gigabit ethernet on VIA 686B southbridge based motherboard is caused by an old problem with the PCI bus of this chipset.

Contents

Popular motherboards with the VIA 686B Southbridge

  • Abit KT7A (RAID)
  • Asus A7V (RAID)
  • EpoX 8KTA3+
  • Iwill KK266-R
  • Soltek SL75KAV-X
  • AOpen AK73 Pro

Problem

The 686B southbridge has a very flakey PCI bus to be ultra technical about things. In its hey day, VIA acknowledged the problem, at the time mainly manifesting problems with certain PCI devices that were particularly heavy on PCI load, such as the Creative Soung Blaster Live!

Solution

Via and enthusiasts issued driver hacks, work around, adjustments to the PCI bus. These days though the latest BIOS update for the above motherboards will incorporate the fix and hence leave you not worrying about trying to find hacks for your current OS.

On the downside though, these really are just hacks to get the PCI bus more reliable, gigabit ethernet on my Abit KT7A averages an abysmal 180Mbps.

See also

Performance of gigabit ethernet on PCI vs Northbridge

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