But looks like i have resolved it... After looking at my network setup.. i saw that my main computer went into my mesh router, and then a cable from the mesh router down to a switch with other stuff plugged into that... apprently it looks like the mesh router can't handle 1gbit on the dedicated ports, even if trying to have both server and client plugged into the mesh router...
however having both clients on the same switch, gave me access to true 1gbit... now going strong with 100-110MB/sec on the SMB file transfer...
Thanks for pointing me to iperf.. that made me re-think the network infrastructure was the problem somehow...
