PCI NIC vs M/B NIC - CPU Hit / Performence Diff?

[TheCorm]

I was just wondering if there would be much of difference in CPU usage and performence when comparing these two:

Netgear FA310TX PCI 10/100 Card (3.5 years old now)

OR

MSI K7N2's integrated Nforce2 10/100 NIC

Cheers,

Jamie

 

[Vette73]

Use the on-board nForce2 Nic. Anandtech's review of the nForce2 board showed the nForce2 Nic very good and used very little cpu cycles. Also you can adjust the Nic to either adjust for more throughput or less CPU cycles. I have a athlon1700+ and have oit set up for throughput.

 

[TheCorm]

Yeah I have used the Nforce2 NIC...simply to just not have an extra card but it's good to know that it's better anyhoo.

 

[Peter]

CPU cycle usage is not so much of a difference. It's the bus bandwidth of where it is. Chipset integrated LAN, or Intel's CSA connected onboard LAN chips, are on a much faster bus than normal 32-bit 33 MHz PCI.