What kind of internal nic card is good?

[Nocturnal]

I have a 3com, but i heard that sucks, so I'm looking for a decent card, at a decent price. Whats the best bang for the buck?

 

[minendo]

I like the Linksys LNE100TX. I have 7 of them running at the moment.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

I like Netgear too. Athough I did have one crap out on me after about a year's use.

 

[John]

Why would a 3com nic "suck"? It offers parallel tasking and low cpu overhead. It is expensive compared to some of the others, but that doesn't necessarily mean it "sucks". If you want cheap and a good performer, go with a Realtek 8139C chip.

 

[TimeKeeper]

Linksys LNE100TX, Netgear FA310 (NOT 311) are very good. (use them before w/out any problem)
But my favorite one is the $5 Realtek 8139 revision C. 🙂 (Auto install and run smoothly w/ both win2k and winxp)

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

If you didn't know it sucked until someone told you it sucked, then why upgrade? If that's the right word..

Anyways, I've used the Linksys LNE100TX on one PC and a NetGear FA311 on the computers I've built so far, and both work fine and I'd feel comfortable recommending either one of em to someone.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

why are you even buying a new card? unless your nic is broken then you are probably wasting your money.

 

[Woody419]

You can pick up a D-Link 10/100 PCI Network Card for $10 this Sunday at Best Buy. I used a couple last weekend and they installed without a hitch.

 

[billyjak]

The D-Link 530 Tx or the 550 TX, the 550 does better video strraming but costs way more.
The 530 TX is a pretty good card, nrver had a problem with D-Link

 

[Dennis Travis]

Which model 3Com Nic is it? If it's a PCI 3Com there is no reason to get another NIC at all. 3Com makes some of the best Nic's out there although they are a bit more expensive than some but are some of the best Nics on the market.

If you really insist in changing to a different NIC I have had good luck with an LinkSys LNE100TX. Have 3 of them running on my network here and never a problem. Who told you your 3Com is not good? Unless there is something wrong with the 3Com it's a first rate Nic.

If my income was a bit higher or my bills lower I would for sure use all 3Com Nics. They are the best but some of the cheaper brands are pretty close and very reliable. Whoever told you that 3Com Nics are junk is not very educated in networking.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

not all generic realtek chipset nic are created equal.
some have good performance as 3com.
some have poor performance.
depends on the maker.

check this out:
http://www.dslwebserver.com/main/nictest.html

 

[dakata24]

have always used netgear fa310 nics and have never run into any problems.. cheap and good.. 🙂

 

[John]

Other reviews

 

[ElFenix]

i have a couple of lne100txs and they're good cards except that neither the driver disks nor the win2k cd had the drivers for win2k. i bought these when 2k was new so that had a lot to do with it. when you do dl the drivers you get the right stuff. i thought that getting a new intel card would solve drivers not being on the 2k cd but it didn't. so far only my 3com has is ready the first time windows boots. the driver disc for my kt226 pro 2 has the intel nic drivers, interestingly.

 

[spamsk8r]

LNE100TX baby

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Love both the 100LNETX and the FA310TX. I can't recommend Netgear anymore though, their customer service has gone to absolute crap. Last 2 times I've called I've had to tell them I couldn't understand what they were saying 🙁 Extremely heavy accents (must have oursourced somewhere. They used to be fine, then one day they were all foreign 🙁)

 

[flood]

i use netgear fa311's exclusively on my server and my main machine
3 in the server and one in the main. never hiccuped or caused any problems.

 

[Blain]

Which NIC's can take odd PCI bus MHz and keep on truckin'? A.K.A. Good OC NIC's 😉

 

[LostHiWay]

<< Which NIC's can take odd PCI bus MHz and keep on truckin'? A.K.A. Good OC NIC's 😉 >>



My Linksys LNE100TX can withstand 182mhz fsb. Maybe more but my MB started crapping out.

 

[kgraeme]

I have two Netgears. The FA310TX in my old Celeron box has always been great. My FA311 in my Athlon box has given me peculiar problems. The particular problem is that I connect through a Linksys cable router, but if I try to connect directly TO the router from the Athlon PC to configure it, the network crashes.

 

[Mem]

Another vote for Netgear FA311,solid product & great value for money.

🙂

 

[Mday]

there are 2 kinds of nics.

ones with a built in processor to offset hits to the main CPU. and ones without.

I use ones without...

i have a Dlink card which uses a realtek chip. Actually, i have 3 dlink cards that use realtek chips. it works fine for me. they can take a 41 MHz PCI bus (83/2).

 

[LocutusX]

3Com's have plenty of issues with various VIA chipsets. So if you're an Athlon-ite, you might want to stay away from 3Com.