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Gigabit Ethernet PCI cards for $24.95
- Thread starter Mystical
- Start date
fleshconsumed
Diamond Member
Who makes these? NIC performance varies from manufacturer to manufacturer as they use different logic, so I'd rather buy intel Gigabit card for $43-46 shipped @ newegg than a noname card.
But it's not a bad find, maybe someone will jump on this deal. And oh yeah, welcome to the forums 😀
But it's not a bad find, maybe someone will jump on this deal. And oh yeah, welcome to the forums 😀
Terminal Raptor
Member
JoyDutta:
Along the same lines of what you were thinking.... Can the PCI interface even handle a giga-bit connection? I thought Intel had to develop a new bus method for that? Any techies care to enlighten an individual here?
-Raptor
Along the same lines of what you were thinking.... Can the PCI interface even handle a giga-bit connection? I thought Intel had to develop a new bus method for that? Any techies care to enlighten an individual here?
-Raptor
32 bit PCI can handle 133MB/s I believe, in burst mode. (I could be wrong, this is off the top of my head) If it's right, that would be 1064 Mb/s (which is greater than 1 Gbps).
Do note that's a best case scenario. However, on a Gb network, you'd have faster switching, and less chance of packets colliding, especially if the machines on it are all limited the way this hypothetical one is. Additionally, I should mention that on a true network, you almost never hit anywhere near the stated "max" speeds. To do so requires specialized setups including specialized software. One way to hit almost a max is to have 2 computers linked in isolation with one being a UDP sink, and the other a UDP producer, then you might hit a sustained 100Mb/s in 1 direction. Any cross talk, or multiple computers, or too many switches/routers in the mix, and performance goes down. On any normal network of even 4 machines, max throughput is usually closer to 60Mb/s, and can drop significantly if multiple systems start moving data. I've seen fully switched (and badly designed) networks drop as low as 20-30% (and much worse in the days before fully switched networks).
So, long story short, even if you can't feed the data at 1Gb/s, you'd still benefit compared to 100Mbs as long as you can feed it faster than 100Mb/s.
Does that help?
Do note that's a best case scenario. However, on a Gb network, you'd have faster switching, and less chance of packets colliding, especially if the machines on it are all limited the way this hypothetical one is. Additionally, I should mention that on a true network, you almost never hit anywhere near the stated "max" speeds. To do so requires specialized setups including specialized software. One way to hit almost a max is to have 2 computers linked in isolation with one being a UDP sink, and the other a UDP producer, then you might hit a sustained 100Mb/s in 1 direction. Any cross talk, or multiple computers, or too many switches/routers in the mix, and performance goes down. On any normal network of even 4 machines, max throughput is usually closer to 60Mb/s, and can drop significantly if multiple systems start moving data. I've seen fully switched (and badly designed) networks drop as low as 20-30% (and much worse in the days before fully switched networks).
So, long story short, even if you can't feed the data at 1Gb/s, you'd still benefit compared to 100Mbs as long as you can feed it faster than 100Mb/s.
Does that help?
SLEEPER5555
Golden Member
but i thought current hd's can't dish out data fast enough? so they would become the bottleneck correct?
the sustained transfer rate of good HDs are around 50-60MB per second. fast ethernet is only 100Mb/second which is 12.5MB/second. using 100baseT, the nic is the bottleneck, move to gigabit ethernet, and the HD becomes the bottleneck. 12.5MB to 50-60MB is a big gain going to gigabit ethernet though. of course HD is not yet up to sustained transfer rate of gigabit ethernets max (125MB/sec).
CheetahMk2
Senior member
heh, I can tell you form experience on a gigabit 3k user+ switched network, max you'll see everyday is probably 12MB/s on a good day. Hard drive speed is the limitation with mose end users, but then again, over 10/100 you hear people talking about 1MB/s being good. And with most of the large files getting thrown around, it makes a big difference with 2GB datafiles.
I was looking around on the site more and they have information on a 'professional series' from wideband coorperation. Apparently they can run 100 meters on cat3 and 300 meters on Cat5. If anyone was looking to upgrade to gigabit in an office environment where new wiring would cost tens of thousands, this could save a ton of money. In the tech spotlight section I think it was, it has a snippet from the article and a link to read the full thing. hen theres a link at the bottom to the products page. comtech
ok, lets get this straight.
PCI = 33mhz x 32bit = 132MByte/sec / 1056Mbit/sec
gigabit ethernet = 1000Mbit/sec = 125MByte/sec
consider that you write to the hard drive, you would be using PCI bandwidth. so to write accross the network, your NIC can only use 61MByte/sec and your GigaNIC can only use 61MByte/sec. A WD SE JB drive will hit that 61MByte/sec in sequintial writes, so its not the bottleneck. The NIC is 125MByte/sec so its not the bottleneck. So the bottleneck is most likely the PCI bus.
I am a very experienced network tech, and i routinely see ~50MByte/sec come accross a GigaNIC card. Intel cards seem to be the best balance of speed and reliability but the Broadcomms are descent as well.
also note that I have a Dual Athlon system with PCI 64x66mhz and a Gigabit ethernet 64x66Mhz(4224Mbit/sec, 528MByte/sec) and a 10,000rpm scsi raid for video editing that can push 160MByte/sec easily. I can push nearly 120MByte/sec accross the network with a single GigaNIC.
basically, your hard drive is not your limiting factor until you move to >PCI32x33 up to PCI 64bit+ or PCI-X. then your drive will most likely be the limit.
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also, this is a realy great price on these cards. only $2 over bulk box cost per card.
PCI = 33mhz x 32bit = 132MByte/sec / 1056Mbit/sec
gigabit ethernet = 1000Mbit/sec = 125MByte/sec
consider that you write to the hard drive, you would be using PCI bandwidth. so to write accross the network, your NIC can only use 61MByte/sec and your GigaNIC can only use 61MByte/sec. A WD SE JB drive will hit that 61MByte/sec in sequintial writes, so its not the bottleneck. The NIC is 125MByte/sec so its not the bottleneck. So the bottleneck is most likely the PCI bus.
I am a very experienced network tech, and i routinely see ~50MByte/sec come accross a GigaNIC card. Intel cards seem to be the best balance of speed and reliability but the Broadcomms are descent as well.
also note that I have a Dual Athlon system with PCI 64x66mhz and a Gigabit ethernet 64x66Mhz(4224Mbit/sec, 528MByte/sec) and a 10,000rpm scsi raid for video editing that can push 160MByte/sec easily. I can push nearly 120MByte/sec accross the network with a single GigaNIC.
basically, your hard drive is not your limiting factor until you move to >PCI32x33 up to PCI 64bit+ or PCI-X. then your drive will most likely be the limit.
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also, this is a realy great price on these cards. only $2 over bulk box cost per card.
Actually your harddrives are more of a bottleneck than most people are explaining here. Think about the big picture. You and your computer typically are doing more than one thing at any one time especially if you are copying large files. Consider that especially for ide based systems you are going to have more than one task or process typically access the drives in question whether it be from user interactiveness, automated tasks, or even accessing the swap file. Once you do that an ide based system quickly gets slower. Also if we're talking about smaller files then your seek times begin factoring in. All in all yes most of the time the drives will be a bottleneck. Now for scsi based systems you'll probably be better off but you're paying for it. Nothing wrong with that as long as you have the money. 😉
Please provide some info to back that up. I'm curious to see some examples of this as I'm not aware of any gb ethernet controllers that hit the cpu like you describe whether they be onboard or a card unless they are of poor design. Also I've heard that some of the new mb designs actually have the gb on its own bus so it reduces pci bus traffic to some extent. I haven't verified this but is something I've heard.
fritzfield
Senior member
Would a card like this speed up broadband internet connection, or does it matter at all with broadband?
CheetahMk2
Senior member
For broadband [e.g cable] 99.99% of the time it is a cable to 10bT adapter, so it wouldn't make any difference in the least.
Thinking about going to gb lan as well. Dell has some offers in their home section that are only slightly more expensive but with free shipping it may even out (here for instance).
There are also cards that are well over $100, I am assuming that the difference between the $100+ cards and these $30 to $60 cards is pci 32 vs. pci64?
There are also cards that are well over $100, I am assuming that the difference between the $100+ cards and these $30 to $60 cards is pci 32 vs. pci64?
There are some cards for sale from comtech that don;t require you to rewire to use gigabit. That could save a bunch of money, those cards are in the range you are seeing. to find them click on products, then the link right before the listing of the products. then under gigabit ethernet look at professional series.
I found a decent article on what we've been discussing: http://networking.earthweb.com/nethub/article.php/2224821
ElectricLegs
Senior member
More important than cheap cards are cheap (but fast) gig switches. The major cost of a small gig lan is the switch not the cards.
Any leads on reasonable ones?
Any leads on reasonable ones?
ElectricLegs, Hawking HGS-4T 4-port SOHO 10/100/1000 switch was $80 shipped from Amazon when I bought it, price varies a bit but it wasn't that long ago you'd pay that for a 10/100 switch, so that seems quite approachable to me.
re: the big thread above: Think of gigE on a PC platform as ">100Mb/s". No, you can't push 1Gb/s in real life, but you can on reasonably fast equipment push 100Mb/s, and so with Fast Ethernet you would hit a bottleneck on the network. gigE gives you a faster bus with a lot more headroom to guarantee (for a good long while at least) that the network isn't the bottleneck.Think about ATA-133 for a moment. How many IDE drives can move data fast enough for the difference between ATA-66 and ATA-133 to matter? But yet, there are ways it's helpful to have the extra bus headroom.
If gigE were still very expensive like it was a few years ago, it wouldn't be worth it. But now, gigE is at the price point where 10/100 stuff was about two years ago, when it really started to take off in the SOHO space. As time moves on, I fully expect most network equipment manufacturers to flush their 10/100 stuff and replace it with 10/100/1000, and the volume will drive the cost down even further.
re: the big thread above: Think of gigE on a PC platform as ">100Mb/s". No, you can't push 1Gb/s in real life, but you can on reasonably fast equipment push 100Mb/s, and so with Fast Ethernet you would hit a bottleneck on the network. gigE gives you a faster bus with a lot more headroom to guarantee (for a good long while at least) that the network isn't the bottleneck.Think about ATA-133 for a moment. How many IDE drives can move data fast enough for the difference between ATA-66 and ATA-133 to matter? But yet, there are ways it's helpful to have the extra bus headroom.
If gigE were still very expensive like it was a few years ago, it wouldn't be worth it. But now, gigE is at the price point where 10/100 stuff was about two years ago, when it really started to take off in the SOHO space. As time moves on, I fully expect most network equipment manufacturers to flush their 10/100 stuff and replace it with 10/100/1000, and the volume will drive the cost down even further.