My home build killed my internet speed?

[Jake1]

Hello everyone, I recently built a gaming PC which is working great for games and things, but seems to have a much slower internet connection than my previous computer, a very old and slow pre-build. My Asrock z77 Extreme4 motherboard apparently comes with some sort of feature which is supposed to speed up my internet, but right now all it's doing is showing me a bunch of information in the bottom right-hand corner of my monitor about download and upload speed, etc. I'm connected via Ethernet cable.

I already have a very slow internet connection (my last computer peaked around 120 kps download rate, but 60-80 was more common) but I'm downloading Borderlands 2 from Steam on this computer and the speed goes up and down for reasons I can't explain. Steam claims the download rate peaked at almost 300 kps, but over half the time it drops to 0 bps for a while until spiking into the hundreds of kilobytes per seconds until dropping down again.

I've done the math and I'm only averaging about 40 kps download rate for this game, so I'll never be able to finish the download the way I'm going!

League of Legends was also at over a second of lag for an entire match (even though my mobo claims it reduces lag by like 5 times or something), and even Google Chrome is taking several seconds to load each page.

What has happened to my internet? Where did I go wrong in my home build?

 

[Simo606]

Did you download and install the NIC drivers for the mobo? Internet performance may be effected without them.

 

[Jake1]

I installed whichever drivers came on the disk with the motherboard. Where can I find the latest NIC drivers for the Asrock online?

 

[Simo606]

What operating system are you using? Also is it 32 or 64bit?

Based on your first post you said the mobo is an Asrock z77 extreme4 so here the link to the downloads page. http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Extreme4/?cat=Download Just make sure it is indeed the correct mobo.

Just select your os then get the LAN drivers

 

[agentbb007]

Your last computer was peaking at 120 kbps? Ouch that is really slow, first things first what internet do you have and what is it's rated speed? I would check to see what other options you have to increase your internet speed because I get more than 120 kbps from my phones 3G.
You said 60-80 was common with your old computer and this one is at 40 so 20 kbps is not a big drop. It could be due to some program that is running in the background checking for updates or something. Open up Command Prompt and run netstat and see what connections are open. Also check the bottom right of your taskbar and see what icons are running under there and right click and close them because they could be using bandwidth as well.

 

[Jake1]

I also get faster internet on my phone's 3G. I live in Alaska in the woods, so I can't get faster internet. It's supposed to be 1 MB at its fastest, but of course it depends where in the world the server is that I'm connecting to.

I meant I'm averaging 40 kbps. The troubling thing is how it spikes to like 300 and then down to 0 back and forth.

I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.