e1000e performance 30%+ slower on laptop Ubuntu vs Windows/Debian

[nate]

On 2021-07-23 15:35, Little Girl wrote:
> Hey there,

Hello! thanks for the reply

> I'm not sure how helpful this will be as far as providing details,
> although there is some documentation available here. I do know that
> my son had an e1000e issue in Ubuntu a while back and had to grab this
> driver and that solved it for him. Hopefully, it will work for you,
> too:
> 
> https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005480/ethernet-products.html
> 

Thanks! That is actually the first place I went, in the past I too have
had to download the driver from that site to try to resolve issues. 
Unfortunately
this time that wasn't the case. Intel apparently moved the development 
for
this driver directly into the kernel, and so at least in the case of
Ubuntu 20, the driver on that site is the same version(3.8.4) as in
Ubuntu 20 itself. My initial tests made me think perhaps an older
driver would work as my Devuan systems run 3.2.6-k and don't have an
issue. However using that same kernel and driver version on Linux Mint
20(based on Ubuntu 20) had no effect on performance.

There is a slightly newer driver 3.8.7 available on sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/files/e1000e%20historic%20archive/

Where they mention that driver development has moved to the kernel and 
there
will be no new releases on that site.  Given the problem spans kernels,
and drivers(whose dates range going back 7 years to today) I don't 
expect
3.8.7 to have any effect on this situation. Also the release notes 
mention
just 3 small things changed in that version.

thanks again

nate