New Netgear card or CPU issue?

[Kamui]

So, today I got a new Netgear card. My old one was a Linksys because my internet provider (Earthlink) said it would be compatable with the Netgear router (well, type B or whatnot). Lo and behold, it wasn't. So I got out an unused Linksys router and had 3 routers hooked up (2 Netgear; Hard wire and wireless, and the wireless Linksys router). All was working well, but one of the other computers in the house (the hard wire, surprisingly) was having connection issues. So I got the Netgear card to get the Linksys out of the picture, seeing as how my computer was the only one actually using the Linksys router. I installed it following the instructions, uninstalled the Linksys out of programs, registry and all.
Of course, now all the computers work but mine.
I can get it connected to the router, can get the internet up(obviously). But when I boot up to FFXI, my CPU starts doing something strange. I was watching my task manager and it was doing this weird flux thing (see attatchment >>; ).

I'd get about 2-4 seconds of lag (it's really, really annoying. When it first happened I thought my game locked up). It did the same thing with and without the Windower. It did the same thing with all other programs off. Restarted numerous times... My friend mentioned that it might be a power savings thing. I checked all the settings (save the BIOS) to the power savings on the wireless card and monitor/HDD settings... all were off. I changed some settings on my startup in between installation, changed those back. Still the same thing... Nobody I know what's up, searched a little on the internet and there was no mention of this.
I havn't noticed it doing this without FFXI on(maybe because CPU usage is to a minimal) and I pushed my CPU by playing with Adobe Premiere Pro, and it didn't happen. So is this an FFXI problem?

This didn't happen until I installed the new Netgear card. To me it sounds absurd and completely irrevolent to eachother, but I'm at a loss now.

No... actually, come to think of it, the difference between the two is that FFXI is online. So it's not my CPU (thank god), it's my card?

So I have an entirely different situation to deal with now. *sigh*

Well, now I guess I can sum it up to one question:
How the hell does a wireless card effect CPU usage so dramatically?


And now that you all know my situation...
Any suggestions, at least?

[Reincarnation]

Re: New Netgear card or CPU issue?

*Glares at Ethernet* Oi, Earthlink for some reason screws up when you use a product for the first time... Do you suppose it could just be Earthlink? I never did wireless, so I'm not quite sure.

[Kamui]

Re: New Netgear card or CPU issue?

Actually, I was thinking the same thing. For some reason Earthlink has it's own wireless service which it's tried using instead of the Netgear card several times. -.-;

I'll look into that, thanks for the comment ~ :D

[Lunaryn]

Re: New Netgear card or CPU issue?

Dunno. I've had some lag problems that I'm not sure whether they're network-related or something else. Particularly as I found out that my R values were in fact considerably lower than friends playing the game. Though when I started testing, the R values suddenly shot up to being comparable. Haven't had a party since then so I can't say whether or not the problem's still there. My network card's pretty reliable, though (Realtek 8139), and my router I built myself and has been reliable (Realtek 8139 on the hub side, NE2k compatible on the modem side).

Yeah, I have an ISA network card. But cable's capped at 3Mbps anyway, and ISA's good to at least 8Mbps.

Anyway, it's strange, I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm replacing said router with a faster box soon, though...

[Omni]

Re: New Netgear card or CPU issue?

the different brands of cards shouldnt have anything to do with compatibilty. they are all using the same standard protocols (ie: IP, TCP, etc...)

looking at your graph it seems that ffxi or something else is eating up lots of cpu time. what processor speed do you run? how much ram do you have?

i have a netgear wireless-b router, linksys wireless, dell wireless, onboard nic, psp, etc on my network at home. everything works fine together. brands dont mean anything, especially since they are probably coming out of the same factory overseas anyways ;p.

i suggest you do some other testing, open up task manager and look at your processes. how many are running? are there process' with large amounts of memory usage when the computer is doing nothing? how much physical memory are you using vs physical memory available? start with this.

[Kamui]

Re: New Netgear card or CPU issue?

You know... I closed Earthlink on the Taskbar and it started lagging at about intervals of 1 min rather than 15 seconds. o_O; So Earthlink had something to do with it, but the fact it didn't stop compleately means there's probably something in my wireless setup conflicting or settings I need to adjust.

But Omni, I can see why you're saying that. It makes no sense to me either why my wireless connection would be doing this to my CPU. It's the whole reason why I made this post; it makes no sense whatsoever. There's nothing abnormal about my system, there's nothing eating at my CPU, the System Idle Process will just jump up to 99% at said interval. Or to have it make more sense, my CPU usage drops to 0-5% at the given intervals.

It's possible Earthlink is still running in the background... maybe there's just some settings I need to adjust on the Earthlink side.