Pci NIC vs. onboard NIC

[Miramonti]

I've always thought there is an advantage to using a pci nic over an onboard nic for heavy network traffic, in that the pci nic will take processing load off of the cpu, which the onboard nic would depend more heavily on.

But is this generally correct?

For reference, I'm currently using an msi neo2 plat. board

 

[canadianpsycho]

I think it basically depends on the chip... Although it might be a moot point with CPUs hitting 3 GHz and up...

For example, a 3com NIC would probably be better then some generic brand.

I'm curious to know which NIC is better on that board myself, as I have one on the way.

 

[phisrow]

My impression is that, generally speaking, it depends on the specific chipsets involved. A lot of "onboard" peripherals are actually just hanging off of the PCI bus anyway, so they are identical to their PCI card counterparts(note, this specifically doesn't apply to things like the better sort of gigabit ethernet controller, which tends to have a special bus to itself, and the like). I think the diffirence between an onboard and expansion card NIC is pretty minimal, except in the case of gigabit NICs on standard PCI busses(which can bottleneck them), and in a comparison between some cheap onboard widget and a really high end server NIC.

 

[piasabird]

Some of the cheap NIC Cards do a worse job than the integrated chips.

There are various option when you purchase a motherboard. The chips they use for ethernet vary quite a bit.

 

[canadianpsycho]

So I guess the real question now is, which of the following NICs are better on this board?

- 1 LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Marvell 88E1111 PHY
- 1 LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Realtek 8110S (1000Mbps)

 

[Brian48]

Having gone through so many motherboards with and without on-board LAN support, I'd say you'd probably won't notice a difference either way. Generally, I've found that a NIC is a NIC is a NIC.

Here's an older article that you might find of interest, but it doesn't include any MB's with on-board LAN.

"Network Card Roundup - Which is the Best PCI Network Card?"

You might find a few more links of interest here in the Modem / DSL / LAN as well, but you'll have to sift through the URLs though.

http://users.rcn.com/chinmonster/links

 

[uOpt]

There are three classes here:

1) good PCI cards, can be on a PCI card or onboard.

2) bad PCI cards, can be on a PCI card or onboard. Same as 1) but higher interrupt load, e.g. most (all?) Realtek chips.

3) non-PCI connections.

4) higher speed PCI cards, PCI-X, PCI-E.

The important part here is to understand that most, almost all, onboard ethernet cards on mainboard are actually connected via the PCI bus. Although they are not on a PCI card, they are routed through the PCI bus on the mainboard.

Only solutions like Intel CSA and NVidia's integrated Gigabit in the nForce3 250Gb are not on the PCI bus.

However, there is not strictly a faster versus slower. A normal PCI bus has enough bandwidth (132 MB/sec) to support Gigabit ethernet at full speed (108 MB/sec). However, the PCI bus is pretty much full in that case. If you also want to use harddrives at the same time, then both harddrive controller and ethernet share the same bus and then things get "slow".

So, only if you use gigabit ethernet at the same time as the harddrives you need non-PCI ethernet. Typically, this is the case for network servers, which get data off the disks and deliver it over Ethernet.

If you just consume the data that comes in over the gigabit connection in the CPU and don't use disk or other high-bandwidth I/O at the same time, then you will not get a big advantage over non-PCI Ethernet.

Hope that helps, let me know if something is unclear.

 

[JackMDS]

There is High Volume High traffic Networks. The one that are running Global Cooperate Networks, etc.

In such Networks components in a pivotal spots might make a Big Difference.

The Networks that we are running at Home (even if they are used for the So Important Games) are baby Network.

I.e. Any decent card that works on or off Mobo will do, there are many bench marks that shows that it really Does Not Matter.

:sun: