My internet speed drops when encoding

[bokonon]

May sound crazy but my internet speed (through wireless adapter) drops when encoding. as soon as heavy CPU usage occurs my upload speed drops from 115kbps to 0-5kbps. My download speed drops to about 20-80kbps from 1.2mbps. accessing any website is extremely slow. I thought, that can't be right so I rebooted router/PC and i got the same problem. Furthermore if I limit the affinity of x264.exe to one core my internet speed picks up again.
I'm using x264 r920 and XP Pro

What's going on?

[MatMaul]

change the x264 process priority to low

[bokonon]

I always have x264.exe set to low priority. Thanks for your reply MatMaul

[Sharktooth]

your netcard is cheap and does not have a dedicated controller/processor. it uses your free CPU cycles... change netcard.

[bokonon]

Weird...I haven't changed wireless adapter and have been encoding with this setup for over a year. I came back from holiday and experienced this problem for the first time.

[Sharktooth]

x264 r920 is at max a week old. so it's not the same setup for over a year, however it may use more CPU resources and your transfer rates collapse.
get a better netcard or keep using one core for x264.
btw the problem is your netcard.

[foxyshadis]

Wireless cards with dedicated WPA/AES chips don't really exist... they all do it in the driver. Did you happen to change the router to WPA (or even WEP) encryption over the holiday, bokonon? If setting to low priority doesn't work, you can try idle (in the task manager), and also check whether it's being thermally throttled as it heats up with too much 100% use.

[bokonon]

well, i tried with an ethernet cable and the problem went away, so yes it was my wireless adapter. Strange that this never was a problem before. Either build r920 is sucking more CPU than previous builds or my adapter is overheating in the summer months. I will try older builds and moving my adapter away from sources of heat (i.e. the PC) to a usb hub.

@foxyshadis i can't find an 'idle' setting in process priority in the task manager.

My guess is thermally throttled.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

It's more the CPU that might overheat and get throttled in order to protect it from damage. So check your CPU temperature...

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/



PorcessExplorer:
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1354/idleui6.png

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

[Blue_MiSfit]

Used to happen to me when I bought one of those cheap WiFi adapters that looks like a USB key. It even happened when I tried to play any online games... ROFL!

Hardwired for the win. I never trust wireless. Ever.

~MiSfit

[Sharktooth]

if it's true wireless cards are only adapters (read as: no dedicated chip) then you have only 2 choiches (but first verify it's not a CPU oveheating problem):
- buy a much faster processor and cool it adequately.
- buy a wired and good ethernet card and forget about wireless (if you already have it you dont need to buy anoher one).