Intel remains to be engaged on a complete repair for the intermittent Ethernet connection points we highlighted in a report again in January. Within the meantime, it has a workaround that mainly turns off Power Environment friendly Ethernet (EEE) mode. MSI seems to be the primary Intel accomplice to launch an installer delivering the workaround. Intel says it’s persevering with to “work in direction of an answer.”
When you’ve got a contemporary Intel motherboard that includes a model of the Intel I225, I226, or Killer E3100 2.5GbE controllers, the headlining replace is for you. Customers with motherboards packing these controllers have reported intermittent disconnections when utilizing Ethernet. Thus, you’ll not have noticed this specific situation should you solely use Wi-Fi on your web and LAN connectivity.
Intel Raptor Lake motherboards typically leverage the brand new Intel I226-V controller, so this intermittent connection situation (which equally aggravated customers of the previous-gen motherboards/controllers like 2019’s I225) continues to supply disappointment to the newest-gen prospects.
Earlier recommendation relating to workarounds, resembling decreasing the controller’s max switch fee to 1 Gigabit, weren’t bulletproof once we final reported on this Ethernet situation. Nonetheless, Intel seems to have narrowed down the reason for the connectivity dropouts to some form of energy-saving performance current within the driver. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the primary time that power effectivity implementations find yourself inflicting customers to spend so much of their private power in fault-finding and fixing productiveness sapping unintended effects.
Intel’s replace, shared by Chi11eddog, says it contains the mitigation of “disabling Power Environment friendly Ethernet (EEE) at 1Gbps / 2.5 Gbps.” It’s potential to do that tweak your self in Superior Home windows/ Linux driver settings, however the downloaded patch might have slightly extra finesse, because it appears to nonetheless apply EEE at 100Mbps speeds.
MSI has launched an up to date driver for its affected motherboards, just like the MPG Z790 Carbon WIFI. We’ve seemed on the obtain file, which doesn’t embody launch notes, and usually are not positive whether or not the recordsdata inside will work on motherboards/programs from different manufacturers. We predict that others may proper click on and set up the E2FN.INF file, however please apply at your individual danger. Please be aware there are completely different drivers relying on whether or not you might be utilizing Home windows 10 or 11. Additionally, you must examine your individual motherboard vendor’s replace pages to see if there are Intel Ethernet patch / replace recordsdata accessible on your particular product.
We hope that Intel’s investigations reveal that this persevering with drawback for its networking controllers is fixable by software program or firmware replace, moderately than leaving customers with power saving performance disabled or a {hardware} revision being required.