Onboard vs. PCI ethernet card.

[dancingpotato]

Which is better a PCI or onboard ethernet ? For example will a PCI ethernet card consume less CPU usage? Download Speed? PCI bus getting clogged? Any other considerations?

This is for general computer use ... on a medium level home PC.

Celeron 345 : 3.06 gig.
Intel motherboard : Intel D865GVHZL
PCI card: Compaq NC3121 (older card 10/100)
Ram: 768 Megs

Thanks 🙂

 

[MDE]

The onboard NIC is fine and probably better than your old PCI card.

 

[JackMDS]

For a small Home Network, it does Not matter what you use.

:sun:

 

[LiekOMG]

At first I thought that onboard would be just fine. However I noticed that during file transfers over network, it was using up like 50% CPU! I installed my old 3com PCI network adapter, and that number went down to 0%.

 

[cmetz]

It depends on what exact controllers are on each. There are good chips, and there are cheap chips. Some motherboards come with good ones, some cheap ones. Ditto add-in cards. Whichever is the better controller will probably be faster.