Hey everyone, this isn't a question but more of a heads-up that hopefully helps out anyone who is also frustrated by the issues we were facing.
So, our organization had purchased several Dell XPS 8930 desktops in early 2019 for some of us, to include myself. The 8930 comes with a network adapter called a Killer E2400 from Intel. Performance had seemed fine up until the last couple months. Why? I am still working on what the trigger was. Anyways, the problem is, these Killer cards prioritize traffic automatically and seem to dislike working with traffic through an ODBC driver to a SQL Server in ArcMap (just a hunch). It was only these machines, and in IT, I've found there are no coincidences!!
Performance would be sluggish well below the standard for workplace efficiency for only those machines. Local GDB's and Shapefiles would load just fine and refresh instantly. The epiphany came when I connected over our WIFI to the SQL database and performance returned.
So, the solution (unless you want to work over WIFI) to this is to download the Intel Killer Performance Center from here:
Intel® Killer™ Performance Suite
Run it, restart as directed, and you should be able to launch the Intelligence Center. You may have to go to the Microsoft Store if it doesn't appear and get it from there. Once the Intelligence Center opens, go to the Settings icon. You will see some things checked by default. Uncheck "Prioritization Engine" and "Auto Bandwidth". Performance in ArcMap will instantly get better if this is your culprit.
I'm not sure if the Killer drivers fight with the ODBC driver when those settings are on, or if it's "optimizations" are grossly miscalculated - but it works disabling them. Annoying that it comes from Dell without the Intelligence Center installed by default so you have no effective control over it out of the box. Anyways, hope this helps someone!
