Camma:
Computer Hardware:
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (Unlocked)
Clock Speed: Varied between 1.6 GHz to 1.8
Motherboard: EPoX 8KHA+
Chipset: VIA KT266A
Videocard:
MSI G3Ti500 Pro-VTG (GeForce3 Ti500 240/500)
Network Card:
3Com 905CX-TXM 10/100
Allied Telesyn AT-2700TX 10/100
DLink DE-528 10Base Combo
Accton 10/100 EN5038
Smartlink 10/100
Memory:
256 MB Corsair XMS PC2400 DDR
Hard Drive: IBM 30.7 GB DeskStar 75 GXP
CDROM: LG 40X
Floppy:
Panasonic 1.44MB
Heatsink: Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3
PowerSupply: Enermax 550 Watt
Software Setup:
Windows 2000 + SP2
VIA 4in1 4.37
DetonatorXP 22.80
DirectX 8.0
Test:
Data Transfers and web surfing
To test the NIC's at the various bus speeds, we transferred a 500MB dummy file between two computers using a Linksys 4 Port Router (it has a 10/100 Switch integrated). Obviously the D-Link was the slowest running at 10BaseT, the file transfer took forever!Each NIC was also subjected to one hour of web surfing.
Here's a MHz breakdown on where the cards stand...
NIC
Max PCI Speed
3Com 905CX-TXM 10/100
150/4 = 37.5 MHz
Allied Telesyn AT-2700TX 10/100
170/4 = 42.5 MHz
DLink DE-528 10Base Combo
160/4 = 40 MHz
Accton 10/100 EN5038
166/4 = 41.5 MHz
Smartlink 10/100
176/4 = 44 MHz
As we see here, the 3Com maxed out at a PCI speed of 37.5 MHz while the Smartlink 10/100 hit an insane 176 MHz FSB. It's rather surprising to get these results, usually the more expensive products have higher quality components.
The Allied Telesyn AT-2700TX 10/100 did pretty well, using a AMD chipset. Perhaps AMD is trying to cater towards the enthusiast in every way. Even though we don't use that 10Base NIC anymore, I threw in the D-Link DE-825 because it seems a lot of broadband companies out there are using these as standard issue for their clients. As for the bottom of the barrel NIC's, those generic ones that you can pick up for around $20, the Accton and Smartlink work pretty well in terms of overclocking.
So what can we conclude here?
For enthusiasts who are looking to push their systems to the max, don't overlook something as trivial as a network card. As the above demonstrated, the 3Com would limit a system to 150 MHz FSB while the Smartlink went as high as 176 MHz! If you're planning to overclock a server, the Allied Telesyn is quite feature rich, it has WoL (Wake on LAN) and a boot ROM (sold separately). If you want to push your computer as high as possible while still keeping the ability to connect to a LAN, try out those Smartlink 10/100's - they seem to handle the high speeds pretty well!
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