When I installed a new PCIe network card into my gaming PC I was surprised by suddenly lagging mouse input (via network, it’s a headless machine)…

It turns out the driver for the network card had a setting for throttling interrupts to the CPU, which was enabled by default. This reduces resource usage, but in my case it introduces problems, because incoming packets (for example me trying to move the mouse in a game) are not immediately sent to the CPU for processing, but rather collected over some amount of time or number of packets.

The way to disable it is:

  1. Open device manager
  2. Open the Properties window of the network card
  3. Select the “Advanced” tab
  4. Set “Interrupt throttling” to “disabled”
  5. Click “Apply”

To be sure I rebooted the PC, but I immediately noticed a less laggy input when applying the setting.

If this applies to you, maybe your driver has a similar setting which is enabled by default.

The other way around might apply as well. If you notice FPS drop or similar issues in a busy network (and are not streaming your input via network), enabling this might give other parts of the system more breathing room. The driver for the card I use also had a setting for changing the “throttling amount”, but only for arbitrary values like “high”, “medium”, and “low”, instead of allowing me to set a time or a number of incoming packets.

I hope this post was useful. If you have any suggestions or found errors please let me know!