Audio stutter and system freezing with Intel I350-T4V2

[SMend4]

Hello everyone,

I am having an issue with my music, videos, games and general system usage coming to a brief halt every so often by high DPC reported by driver tcpip.sys, which I believe is to be related to the Intel I350-T4V2 NIC that I have in my system. This is the report from LatencyMon that was generated after nine minutes of it running:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CONCLUSION

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.

LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:09:15 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SYSTEM INFORMATION

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Computer name: STEVEN-DT

OS version: Windows 10 , 10.0, build: 15063 (x64)

Hardware: ASRock, Z370 Gaming K6

CPU: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz

Logical processors: 12

Processor groups: 1

RAM: 32701 MB total

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CPU SPEED

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reported CPU speed: 3696 MHz

Measured CPU speed: 1 MHz (approx.)

Note: reported execution times may be calculated based on a fixed reported CPU speed. Disable variable speed settings like Intel Speed Step and AMD Cool N Quiet in the BIOS setup for more accurate results.

WARNING: the CPU speed that was measured is only a fraction of the CPU speed reported. Your CPUs may be throttled back due to variable speed settings and thermal issues. It is suggested that you run a utility which reports your actual CPU frequency and temperature.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

MEASURED INTERRUPT TO USER PROCESS LATENCIES

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The interrupt to process latency reflects the measured interval that a usermode process needed to respond to a hardware request from the moment the interrupt service routine started execution. This includes the scheduling and execution of a DPC routine, the signaling of an event and the waking up of a usermode thread from an idle wait state in response to that event.

Highest measured interrupt to process latency (µs): 64369.038961

Average measured interrupt to process latency (µs): 5.038917

Highest measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs): 64365.437229

Average measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs): 1.360576

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

REPORTED ISRs

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Interrupt service routines are routines installed by the OS and device drivers that execute in response to a hardware interrupt signal.

Highest ISR routine execution time (µs): 92.833333

Driver with highest ISR routine execution time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total ISR routine time (%): 0.100551

Driver with highest ISR total time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Total time spent in ISRs (%) 0.122042

ISR count (execution time <250 µs): 864900

ISR count (execution time 250-500 µs): 0

ISR count (execution time 500-999 µs): 0

ISR count (execution time 1000-1999 µs): 0

ISR count (execution time 2000-3999 µs): 0

ISR count (execution time >=4000 µs): 0

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

REPORTED DPCs

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

DPC routines are part of the interrupt servicing dispatch mechanism and disable the possibility for a process to utilize the CPU while it is interrupted until the DPC has finished execution.

Highest DPC routine execution time (µs): 75280.324134

Driver with highest DPC routine execution time: tcpip.sys - TCP/IP Driver, Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total DPC routine time (%): 0.043887

Driver with highest DPC total execution time: nvlddmkm.sys - NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 388.31 , NVIDIA Corporation

Total time spent in DPCs (%) 0.135294

DPC count (execution time <250 µs): 3095769

DPC count (execution time 250-500 µs): 0

DPC count (execution time 500-999 µs): 1

DPC count (execution time 1000-1999 µs): 0

DPC count (execution time 2000-3999 µs): 0

DPC count (execution time >=4000 µs): 0

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

REPORTED HARD PAGEFAULTS

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hard pagefaults are events that get triggered by making use of virtual memory that is not resident in RAM but backed by a memory mapped file on disk. The process of resolving the hard pagefault requires reading in the memory from disk while the process is interrupted and blocked from execution.

Process with highest pagefault count: none

<...

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

Thank you for posting in Wired Communities. Just to double check have you tried installing the NIC in other slot and if the same issue will occur? Thanks,Sharon

[SMend4]

Yes, I tried two PCIe slots and the problem still exists. Here is a diagram of the board and the slots are boxed in red of the ones I tried. I made sure any power-saving BIOS features were turned off so they don't affect the PCIe slot operation, too.

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

Thank you for the information. I will further check on thisRegards,sharon

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

Please download the SSU tool at https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows- and run the tool to generate the SSU log. You may attach the log here. As your motherboard has an onboard NIC, do you experience the same issue if using onboard NIC?Thanks,Sharon

[SMend4]

Is there a direct link, dropbox or google drive link where I can drop the SSU's generated files? I see it has serial numbers in the output?

As for the motherboard onboard NIC, the problem still persists while using it, yes.

[idata]

Hi Rewrtten,

I sent a PM to you.Thanks,Sharon

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

As the issue on the ASRock Motherboard occurred both on onboard NIC and standalone NIC. Have you contacted ASRock about this issue? You may also try the following:1) Try updating the motherboard BIOS2) Fresh Install of Windows* 10, Please do necessary backup3) Uninstall all Audio Drivers/Codecs (test for audio stutter)4) Update the sound card drivers5) Update INF Chipset and LAN Driver 6) Turn Off any On-Board Audio Enhancements 7) Adjust audio settings8) Disable On-Board Audio9) Disable SLI (if enabled) Please try contacting ASROCK for further assistance. Thanks.Regards,sharon

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

Please feel free to update me if you have tried the suggestion and further contact Asrock support. Do you still have other assistance needed?Thanks,Sharon

[SMend4]

I tried step 1-2 and step 2 is where my problem was finally solved. I left LatencyMon running again for a full hour and now there were zero stutters during operation of my desktop after a new installation of Windows 10 Education, version 1703. I'm not sure what caused the problem to fix, but I think it was either a software or driver file that was causing the Intel NIC to halt completely while the app inspected whatever network traffic was coming into the adapter.

For the steps, here was the outcome before I resulted to reinstalling Windows 10 on my system:

1) My BIOS is at its latest version, version 1.30

2) I installed Windows 10 fresh without installing all my usual software (adobe reader, malwarebytes, notepad++, etc). Haven't encountered the stuttering problem yet and this installation of Windows 10 is still in a clean state.

3) I uninstall all the audio drivers and Windows installed ones from Windows Update (WHQL Microsoft signed drivers)

4) I downloaded the latest realtek audio drivers from their website and installed them. The problem continues to occur, microstutter at random times and pointing to the Intel NIC

5) Downloaded and installed the latest INF chipset drivers and LAN driver for my Intel I350-T4V2. The problem continued.

6) No audio enhancements were enabled in the Sound properties of the Realtek playback device.

7) Audio settings, like quality and enhancements were left at their defaults from the driver installation

8) Disabled onboard audio, but this can not be a permanent solution for me because I need audio from my PC.

9) My system does not have dual graphics cards.

Since I have Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, both of which scan network traffic from the Intel NIC, do you think that could have caused the high DPC latency stuttering? I haven't reinstalled any of my apps back to this system yet, so I am thinking some software is causing the Intel NIC to have high DPC latency. I just don't know which piece of software it is.

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

Thank you for the update and I am glad the problem was resolved. With regards to the apps that might causing the latency issue, you can try installing the apps to check in order to isolate the problem or contact Microsoft* or the software vendor to check. Thank you. Thanks,Sharon

[idata]

Hi Rewritten,

Please feel free to update me if further assistance needed.Regards,Sharon