I looked into the management engine firmware and drivers, but I have no idea if I can just flash the latest 8.xx 1.5m firmware or if I have to stick with whatever is part of the latest bios for my motherboard. I don't know if it would do any good either.
Can ME somehow be disabled from software?
Current info:
Driver version: 11.0.0.1133
Firmware version: 8.1.0.1248
While I wait for Asus support to get back to me, I tried changing AlternateSemaphoreDelay without luck.
If anyone else needs to find the number of their NIC, start msinfo32, go to Components -> Network -> Adapter and find the name of your NIC in the list. Just below, the number for your NIC is "index". I'm on Windows 7, but I assume this works for 8 as well.