Network issues with Optiplex 740

Hello all,

 

Here's a really perplexing issue. Our company has a Geographic Information Systems/Computer Aided Drafting and Design Department, and I've recently purchased two of those individuals two Optiplex 740 (AMD nForce based) workstations and two nVIDIA Quadro FX 1500  to complement those workstations.

 

After taking one of the new workstations and re-formatting from scratch, installing the Dell System drivers, chipset, video, and soundcard drivers specific for that motherboard (which I downloaded directly to a new cd from the Dell Support site). I ran all the Windows XP SP2 updates, installed McAfee 8.0i, Office 2003, Adobe 8, AutoCADD 2007and ArcView 9.2. Essentially giving the user the same programs she has on her old GX270 with the GeForce 4200Ti.

 

When we originally ran the ArcView software, we wanted to test how efficient the system's onboard video was (Quadro NVS) compared to the dedicated 4200Ti she had in her old system. So, we had both her new and her old system load a large ArcView file. It contains about 40 TIFF files that are anywhere from 50 - 100MB in size.

 

Well, the old system was chugging away at the content as usual, but the new system was almost 20 times slower at pulling the TIFFs across the network. So, I figured maybe the AntiVirus software was prohibiting the traffic and turned it off. No such luck. I figured that it was just the onboard Quadro NVS that was causing it to be so slow, so I waited for the FX 1500 to arrive.

 

Upon installing the Quadro FX 1500 and running the same ArcView file again, we still experienced the same slowdown on the newer system...!?

 

So, I figured that there was a bottleneck someplace. I ran the latest free build of SiSoft's Sandra and noted no abnormalities with the system, other than the fact that the network was running at 10MB Half Duplex. After pulling a few hairs out here and there, I came to the conclusion that I had accidentally used a 10Mbps hub in that office to set up all the systems next to each other and attributed the slowness to that. BUT... I also thought about it for a while and made the assumption that since ALL systems, new AND old, are sitting on this hub, that the old GX270 should be getting the proverbial "spanking" by the newer GX740. But, again, this was wasn't the case.

 

So, here I have a GX740 with a Quadro FX 1500 that is running 20 times slower than a GX270 with a GeForce 4200Ti when trying to open ArcView files from across the network. To eliminate any issues that it could be a bad network card, I used the second GX740 that I purchased, left the regular ole Dell image on it, installed the ArcView 9.2 software on it... and came up with the same end result.

 

I took the first GX740 and put a cross-over cable between it and the CADD server directly, which brought both systems on a Gigabit connection, and it appeared to work just fine. So, something happens on the GX740 integrated NICs that makes the system perform poorly when pulling large chunks of data. NOPE... not completely true...

 

To troubleshoot whether it is the actually onboard NIC or something else, I put an older 3Com 3C950 PCI add-in card into the first GX740, and still had the same issues.

 

So, conclusion... something on the GX740s running on a 10Base network creates a bottleneck and causes them to perform substandard to a GX270 on a 10Base network.

 

Suggestions, hints, ideas, comments?