I first thought that it might be a good idea to post a support case on Nvidia Forum's this go me nowhere except for a load of automated responses about service packs and driver versions.
So, I was on my own......power up Google and get searching, a couple of hours went by and someone lead me to the network properties for the NIC I had the issues on.....bingo!
If you have this issue and want to fix it then follow the guide below:
1. Open the Network Sharing Centre...

2. Click Manage Network Connections....

3. Right click on the active network connection and choose properties

4. Click on Configure for the NIC and choose Advanced, then click on "Interrupt Moderation" and Disable this feature...

5. Disable Large Send Offload (IPv4) for all entries in this list...



7. Return to to screen as shown in step 2, on the toolbar click Advanced>Advanced Settings and ensure you have removed the tick boxes for all IPv6 entries as shown below:

8. Reboot Vista for the 1GBps network card speed in Vista x64 SP1