Looking for good Gigabit PCI cards for my machines + opinions on a gigabit switch

[Amused]

I'm wanting to go to gigabit on all my boxes. My P4C800-E has an Intel Pro1000 intergrated. The other machines are an Asus P4T-E and Dell BX based machine (XPS PII450 upgraded to a tualatin 1.4GHz).

Would a couple of Intel Pro1000 MT cards fit the bill and be compatable with both the P4T-E and Dell? I figure they would, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Thanks :beer:

BTW, The gigabit switch I've choosen in the D-Link DGS-1005D. Good choice?

 

[Sideswipe001]

I don't see why they wouldn't work.

On a side note, stay away from the Linksys gigabit card. I had it installed with an Adaptec SCSI U160 card - and it caused corrupted files on my HD. Every time I started copying stuff across the LAN, within 2 minutes I had corrupted OS files on my HD. I'd trust the Intel cards though. I've never had a problem with them.

 

[mcveigh]

I use them, they work fine.

make sure your cabling is good. if you don't get gigabit speeds replace everything with machine made cat6

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I have three Intel Pro 1000/MT cards, they work fine. I also have a couple of AOpen gigabit cards that work OK, but the Intel cards get about 20% more bandwidth using QCheck to test the link. I have a 5 port Edimax gigabit switch which seems to work OK. I don't see any impact with or without the switch between two computers, also with QCheck.

On a negative note, I also don't get the results I really wanted. Writing to a remote machine, the principal reason for installing the gigabit network, is not that much faster than with 100mbit cards, maybe 20%. Reading from the remote machine is about 3x faster, so it's some file management overhead, I just am not sure where to go from here...

 

[cmetz]

Netgear GA302T or Intel Pro/1000MT are the two I like. Avoid the cheap NS chipset boards. The D-Link switch should work fine. There's not much to a 4/5/8 port switch these days.

Expect a noticeable improvement but not a 10x or even 2x speed improvement. gunrunnerjohn's 20% improvement is about what I think is reasonable to expect. People here sometimes have unresaonable expectations for gigabit and then getting upset when those expectations aren't met. Gigabit's main value is room to grow, but even with your existing systems, you should be able to do noticeably better than 100Mb/s. If you can do that for not much money and you really use your network, then it's probably worth it.

 

[sxr7171]

I suppose then for a one time only large file transfer (copying stuff to new laptop), it might be better to use firewire or USB 2.0 - right?

 

[dmcowen674]

Good choice on the switch

 

[cmetz]

sxr7171, it's not a simple question to answer, because both Firewire and USB were very deifinitely NOT intended to be used for networking (and neither are their hardware implementations & drivers) and Ethernet, of course, is. You might find that FW and USB at much higher bandwidth performs worse in practice. I haven't tried it so I'm not sure.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

Originally posted by: sxr7171
I suppose then for a one time only large file transfer (copying stuff to new laptop), it might be better to use firewire or USB 2.0 - right?

For a one-time transfer, I'd just use the existing 100mbit NICs, they'll be plenty fast. After all, you do need time to drink your coffee, right?