Onboard NICs

[steelodon]

What are your opinions on onboard NICs? Is it better to buy a PCI/PCIe NIC?

 

[Arcanedeath]

If it's an Intel NIC it's fine even onboard but otherwise I'd get a PCI-E NIC.

 

[mikeymikec]

OP, are you going to have any particularly demanding uses for the NIC?

 

[Elixer]

Onboard NICs are fine for 99% of the people out there.
If this is for a business, things get a bit murky, so you have to specify what you are hooking it up to.

 

[JackMDS]

What are your opinions on onboard NICs? Is it better to buy a PCI/PCIe NIC?

If you would describe what your network is comprised of, and what it is used for, there might an answer to this question.


😎

 

[ch33zw1z]

Got to test it out. I use onboard and have had no issues, sans my P5K with an Attansic L1 gigabit nic, disabled and got a PCI-E x1 Intel 1000/PT If I remember the model correctly 🙂

 

[yinan]

I use them.

I am mostly out of PCIe slots due to video cards and storage controllers.

 

[KentState]

Intel onboard components are typically very good, even besting sub $200 individual cards.

 

[yinan]

Not as fast as http://ocz.com/consumer/revodrive-3-x2-pcie-ssd

 

[Fardringle]

Not as fast as http://ocz.com/consumer/revodrive-3-x2-pcie-ssd

That's not a network adapter..

 

[yinan]

KentState was commenting on why I needed PCIe slots

 

[KentState]

KentState was commenting on why I needed PCIe slots

I was replying to the OP. I would have quoted your post if it was about you.

 

[Mixolydian]

If it's an Intel NIC it's fine even onboard but otherwise I'd get a PCI-E NIC.

Why do you say that?

Most onboard NIC's I've seen are Realtek.

 

[fuzzymath10]

The realtek on my H67 motherboard is OK. When transferring to/from my G41 machine, i couldn't get more than 350mbps. I added an intel NIC to the G41 machine and I can get 600-800mbps and that is probably as fast as my hard drives can go anyway.

 

[Ayah]

Why do you say that?

Most onboard NIC's I've seen are Realtek.

Some Intel boards (can't say all since I haven't actually looked at all) do have i217, 82579, i210 or 82574's onboard. Asus' high end lines do as well (at least intel ones).

 

[Tsavo]

Depends on what you are doing. If you are just sucking down slow-arsed internet, OB stuff is fine. For anything else, get Intel.

I use only Intel AIB NIC's.

Zero problems, ever. Excellent drivers and hardware. 115 MB/s average (10's of 1000's of small files need not apply, as with any NIC).

My Thinkpads have non Intel ethernet, and they all waddle around at 70 MB/s, and are sometimes quite flaky in operation. Same with any other non-Intel NIC I've ever had the displeasure of using.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Intel is the gold standard for support / drivers and compatibility even if it's an onboard Intel chipset. If you don't have an onboard Intel NIC then consider getting a PCI-E one. Realtek makes ok NIC's but they just don't compare to intel's. If all you are doing is surfing the net it doesn't matter much what you get but otherwise I think Intel NIC's are just better.

 

[imagoon]

I would put it this way:

All those fortune 500 companies with 20,000+ pc's, high odds around 19,996 of them are using on board NICs. I what I would consider most cases, the on boards are fine for just about everything.

 

[lord_emperor]

Having previously worked at an ISP only mission critical servers used dedicated NICs.

At one point I had a dismally slow old computer working as my router and the on-board NIC contributed noticeably to CPU load. I used hardware NICs that time.