Broadcom or 3com, which is better?

[Freejack2]

Got a system that has a 3com 3CR990 TX97 10/100 secure nic (pci card) in it. The new board going into the system has a Broadcom 4401 integrated 10/100 nic in it.
The system networkwise uses the ethernet card mainly for the internet and some normal network use. It's just a workstation, not a server.

With this in mind Is there any real advantage the 3CR990 has over the Broadcom 4401 that I should keep the 3cr990 in there? Or can I free up an ethernet card and just use the Broadcom 4401?

 

[mcveigh]

I have no real opinon on either. I prefer intel cards for servers, but for workstations, I bet you won't notice one bit of difference.

I wonder if the 3com card will use more cpu cycles though as it's a secure nic?

 

[MysticLlama]

Actually, it should be the reverse, the point of the secure NIC is to relieve CPU cycles.

I have two of them in my computer and when they are both maxed out I'm using like 1-2% CPU utilization (The good SCSI card helps a lot here as well).

The NICs to TCP Segmentation and IPSEC in hardware, which means the CPU doesn't have to. So if you spend a ton of time running around on SSL sites you just might save 3 seconds of CPU time eventually.

For just a workstation surfing the net and doing file transfers here and there it really shouldn't make a bit of difference unless the broadcom just really sucks for some reason.