Download speed issue/can motherboards cause slow download speeds?

[Zeltice]

Hi, after the release of Diablo 3 I noticed that I got lag spikes and terrible latency throughout the game, other than that it takes me a while to load youtube videos. I attempted to get to the bottom of this slow internet issue.

When using my ISP's speed test I find that my speed is less than half of the other computers in my house. Originally I was using a USB network adapter (TP Link) and found that my speeds were a lot slower than that of the computer in the next room that's using a cable.

I then put the USB network adapter into that computer and found that it did not change the speed whatsoever, that being it stayed at the same speed as the cable.

I decided to buy a network card (TP-Link TL-WDN4800) and the speed test results were the same in my computer. I then tried using the cable from the next room and again returned the same speed (100kb/s ish), so I took my computer into the room that has the router (another room that gets faster speeds) and tried there to no avail.

I tried a number of malware scans(AdAware, Malware Bytes, Spyware Doctor) that returned a couple trojans which I erased and then decided to put my HDD into my brother's pc which is in the room with the router and finally got faster speeds. I also put his HDD into my PC and did a speed test and found it was still very slow. To me it seems the only thing that could be causing the lack of speeds is my motherboard, so I was wondering if this can actually happen and if I need to replace it or if something else is magically taking my internets.

Thanks for any help in advance! Have some specs in case something else could be a problem. I built this computer over a year ago and its mostly used for gaming.

Mobo - ASUS P6T

CPU - Intel i7 950 @ 3.07 Ghz

GPU - 1GB Sapphire Radeon HD 6850

Network Adapter - TP-Link TL-WDN4800 RAM - 12GB of Kingston DDR3 1600mhz (set of 3 sticks) and 6GB of Ram that I believe runs at 1333mhz.

OS - Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

 

[o1die]

I have the same issue with my dsl service. It's best to download when peak demand is low, at night or early in the morning. Not much you can do about it.

 

[zootnerper]

The motherboard will not be the source of the problem unless it is damaged somehow. I have a crappy Atom N270 processor in a Netbook downloading at full speed (7MB down) if the file is sourced within the country.

The ISP is likely the problem.

With Youtube iit could be the browser. How many tabs (total) do you have open at any one time? You can run into memory problems if there are too many. Try a different browser.

 

[Zeltice]

I might not have explained too well, basically what is happening is I have two computers and I have connected both to the internet at the same source (a cable) at different times.
One of these computers will run at a decent speed for my internet connection (we can just call this the first computer), when it's unplugged and the other is in the second one will run at about half the download speed, when compared to the first.
I swapped the hard drives in each computer and found that the first computer with the second computer's hard drive still gets faster speeds (I thought I may have had malware or spyware that was causing the issue), while the second computer with the first computer's hard drive has lower speeds.
I don't quite understand how this could be my ISP and there is a chance that the motherboard could be damaged as when I got it, it was damaged from shipping and had to be repaired.
I'll try a speed test with chrome and some other browsers rather than firefox but I was mostly wondering if one of the components of my computer (I could only see it being the motherboard as the ethernet cable connects directly into it) could in theory cause a lessened speed.

Thanks for all the responses though!

 

[JPCOdessa]

dear Zeltice,

I got exactly the same problem you describe...I just build a new rig but its internet speed is just as half as my Laptop. Both are using the same connection..

Did you find out what is causing the problem?

Patrick C.