After the Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller completely disappeared from Device Manager (and the internet connection disappeared as well), my mouse became extremely snappy. I can’t even describe how smooth it felt. I tested it several times, and I can confidently say that the Realtek controller/driver is causing input latency on my system more than anything else.
What’s interesting is that simply unplugging the Ethernet cable (I'm using CAT6 SFTP cable) doesn’t have the same effect. The only way I get that level of smoothness is by completely removing the Realtek controller from Device Manager.
Since I obviously need an internet connection, I started looking for ways to reduce the input lag without uninstalling the controller. The only thing that helps a little (but nowhere near as much) is setting Interrupt Priority for the Realtek controller to Low using MSI Mode Utility 3. That reduces latency somewhat, but the improvement is less than half of what I get when the controller is fully removed.
So here’s my question: has anyone else dealt with this issue? Are there any other fixes? And would it be worth buying something like the Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I210-T1, would that actually help?
P.S. Be careful if you try uninstalling the Realtek controller, it may be difficult to fix afterward since the driver can’t detect the adapter. Create restore points first.
UPD
By default, after installing Realtek Ethernet Driver on my system, the settings in MSI Utility 3 for "Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller" are as follows: MSI Mode Enabled; Limit 16; Priority High.
I currently switched to MSI Mode Disabled; Limit 2 (same as Number of RSS Queues 2); Priority Low. I tried setting the Limit to 2 with MSI Mode Enabled, however, internet connection disappears in such case. The hitreg and mouse snappiness feels already good with the settings that I've already mentioned. Will keep testing the settings, however, at the moment these are the best settings for my system as I've tested plenty of them.
After applying these settings the affinity of "Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller" goes to core 2 and 3 instead of E-cores 6-13
UPD 2
I just switched from NDIS to NetAdapterCx driver and it seems that NetAdapterCx is causing less input latency on my system. What is more, NetAdapterCx default MSI Mode Utility 3 are the following: MSI Enabled; Limit 16; Priority Undefined. The mouse feels way smoother with this driver, so I haven't changed any MSI Mode settings as for now.
UPD 3
I actually found an issue now. Everything started about 2 months ago when I bought a Logitech Superlight 2 mouse. After that, my internet began dropping from time to time. I also started getting packet loss here and there, and I thought it was related to the NDIS driver/ISP.
When I was re-plugging my devices, I accidentally changed the port to another and thought that Realtek Driver fixed an issue. However, now, after doing some research, I'm sure that it’s caused by EMI since I’m playing on 4k polling rate (I used to play on 1k). When I plug my mouse next to the ethernet adapter, the mouse is pretty smooth, however, I get packet loss and ethernet adapter disconnects. And when I switch the USB port, the internet works perfectly with no packet loss, but the mouse feels off.
As soon as I plugged my 4k polling rate mouse into the USB port next to the ethernet adapter, my internet speed dropped from 1000mbit/s to 100mbit/s as Speed & Duplex is set to Auto Negotiation. That's crazy.
UPD 4
Here i'll explain my issue even better. The only USB 2.0 port on my MOBO is next to the Ethernet Adapter. The mouse on USB 2.0 is very responsive and smooth, however, when I use it (even with dongle), I get packet loss and internet speed drops from 1000mbit/s to 100mbit/s, so I have to restart my PC to get the speed back, however, it will drop to 100mbit/s later again. If I use USB 3.0 mouse becomes slow and unpredictable. Any ideas how to make USB 2.0 usable without buying External Ethernet PCIe card?
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CPU: 14600KF
GPU: 5700XT
MOBO: AsRock Z790 PG Lightning
RAM: Kingston Fury 32 GB DDR5 5600 MHZ