Recommendations for a good gaming 10/100 NIC

[amndouglas]

I just built a new athlon 1.4 but haven't put a Network Card in it yet. My NIC in my old computer is a cheap D-Link 10/100 Ethernet adapter. I think I only paid about $10 for it and it's obvious that it was cheap between the drivers and the card itself. Can anyone recommend a good NIC in terms of Cpu Utilization, User Friendliness of drivers, and overall quality. Also, I am looking at getting a new 10/100 Ethernet 4 or 5 port hub with an uplink. Any recommendations on this would also be helpful.

Thanks.😕

 

[Tarfin]

3COMs are very good at low cpu utilization coupled with high performance. The 3C509 series is an excellent choice with drivers for just about any OS you want.

 

[Wik]

With a 1.4 gig Athlon why be worried about CPU utilization? Your D-Link most likely uses the realtec chipset and should work just fine. You won't even see a difference if you spent your money on the 3Com. Forget about the card and spend the little extra on getting a switch instead of a hub.

 

[sep]

How can you measure the CPU pull from a NIC?

I have an SMC 10/100TX card (4 of them) and never had a problem. At $10 a pop it's a GREAT DEAL!

 

[Nightfall]

There was a review on NICs on Tom's Hardware site. The 3com was at the top. I am not suprised. I bought a couple for my home network and I get awesome throughput with no CPU Utilization. 🙂

 

[JackMDS]

Network Interface Cards (NIC), in a small Network environment.

In general, there is a two-tier consideration in pricing.

1. Quality and manufacturing cost.
2. How can we to take people for a ride (or do you know some one that pays $30 for a cable that takes $1 to manufacture).

What you pay depends on how informed you are about the issues.

Last week Tom?s hardware compared three NICs.
I used Pricewatch.com to find the best price for these NICs.

1. 3Com 3CR990-TX-97 - $80
2. 3Com 3C905C-TX $30
3. SMC 1211TX $13

Quote from: http://www6.tomshardware.com/network/01q3/010820/nic-11.html#conclusion

?Well, there is some difference between Network cards. The difference was not that great. Some cards did have better performance than others, but over all most of the cards performed within acceptable ranges. ?

If you read the rest, you can infer that if there a difference it will impact high volume cooperate Network, and not three computers sharing the Internet at home.

Another good comparison you can find here:

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

I wonder how many people spend over $50 for a NIC, can not afford a Router, and share with ICS.

 

[Nightfall]

You can get 3com nics pretty cheap on Ebay. I got three off a dutch auction, brand new, for $15 each + $5 shipping for all of them = $50.

Can't beat the price for three nics. 🙂

Thanks Jack for the links to all that info. 🙂

 

[PrincessGuard]

I get all my NICs off eBay as well. Hell of a lot cheaper than getting them off retailers.

I tend to stick with 3Com and Intel NICs because almost every OS has built-in drivers for them. Not that big of an issue, but it saves a bit of time (especially if you have an obscure card that requires a kernel recompile to work).

However, even though Windows has built-in Realtek 8139 drivers I actually had to kludge around with IRQ settings to get some of those cards to work.

 

[amndouglas]

Thanks everyone. I think I will go with the 3com 3c905c. The link to Tom's Hardware was very helpful. The main reason I wanted to get away from the D Link (it is a realtek chip) is just because of the cheapness of the card itself. The metal on the back was so flimsy that the network cable connector actually pulled out once and broke the retaining clip on the card instead of the plastic clip on the cable. Plastic or metal? Which should have broke first? I would rather replace a network cable connector rather than a card.

Anyways. Thanks for all the suggestions. Later.