Onboard lan vs add in card

[perdomot]

Curious if there is a benefit to using an add in gigabit ethernet card as opposed to the onboard lan that comes with mobos.

 

[JackMDS]

If the onboard is Not Giga, and you do have functional Giga Network (Giga switch and other computers with Giga) it is a good idea to add a Giga card.

Otherwise adding a Giga card does nothing for you.

 

[jlazzaro]

i prefer the onboard cards where available as most of the newer ones utilize pci-e...

 

[semo]

external giga cards are useful if you need snmp and/or vlan trunking and if the internal doesn't have these features. in terms of performance, throughput and other tweaks i have no idea...

 

[kevnich2]

Personally I've had more failures with onboard NIC's than add-ons but comparing the ration, most of my clients also had all onboard than add-on as well but in general, I don't see a difference between the two. Like Jack said, if you have a gigE network and the onboard is just fast ethernet, it'd be better to go with a GigE add-on card.

 

[Madwand1]

If the context of your question hasn't changed, the answers probably haven't either. If you give more updated specifics, perhaps better answers can be formulated.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=36&threadid=2135717

 

[Nothinman]

It depends on the chipsets and drivers. Some are good and some are bad, whether the card is onboard or not is irrelevant.

 

[perdomot]

Not sure if the NIC is acting up or if perhaps its the router but lately when I download stuff directly from various sites, not bittorrent style, the download speeds fluctuate greatly and even pause or stop at times. If it was only one site, I would suspect the servers there or something but its happened at various sites if sporatically. I changed cables but it made no difference so perhaps its the router or modem.

 

[JackMDS]

I get it a lot too I think it is the time of the ytear that the Internet use jumps so Hi that it become overloaded.

Do a local transfer of a Big file between the computers. If it does the same then it is Network problem.

Check the TCP/IP stack values, Optimizing the TCP/IP Stack - http://www.ezlan.net/Internet_Speed.html