which is faster? integrated lan or pci card? (look)

[AkumaX]

which would you use? i'm using nvidia's nforce2 mcpi integrated nic and i have a 3com 3c905-tx. are there any speedtest benchmarking tools?

 

[FracturedSoul]

I have used both, onboard LAN now and in previous computer a 10/100 NIC. Haven't seen a differance.

 

[Nothinman]

Even onboard cards are on the PCI bus, you won't notice a difference.

 

[Carp1812]

The only way you'll notice a difference is if you have an onboard gigabit NIC versus a PCI gigabit NIC. Also, whatever computer you are connecting to must also have a gigabit card and they must be connected by cable that supports gigabit transfers. If you don't have this setup, you won't notice a difference. I usually use the onboard card simply so I don't have to mess with another PCI card that might not be seated properly, etc. It just eliminates one more connection. My $.02.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I've noticed lowwer CPU utilization on my integrated Nic on my Nforce 2 mobo than on a cheapo Realtec nic ... like ... when FPTing PC to PC on my network .... (my server has integgrated gigabit, and my switch has a gigabit uplink (which connects to my server as I am using it as my router as well)

 

[Nothinman]

I've noticed lowwer CPU utilization on my integrated Nic on my Nforce 2 mobo than on a cheapo Realtec nic ... like ... when FPTing PC to PC on my network .... (my server has integgrated gigabit, and my switch has a gigabit uplink (which connects to my server as I am using it as my router as well)

That would be a sh!tty driver issue.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I've noticed lowwer CPU utilization on my integrated Nic on my Nforce 2 mobo than on a cheapo Realtec nic ... like ... when FPTing PC to PC on my network .... (my server has integgrated gigabit, and my switch has a gigabit uplink (which connects to my server as I am using it as my router as well)

Realtek NICs are know to have higher CPU utilization than say, 3Com.
If you have a MoBo wich has an integrated 3Com NIC, go with that one.

 

[jswjimmy]

use the mobo it frees up i/o's

 

[kylef]

Even onboard cards are on the PCI bus, you won't notice a difference.

This is simply not true.

Several modern "multi-threaded I/O" chipsets like the Sis 735 have built-in ethernet MAC layers that do NOT use the PCI bus and therefore do not steal PCI bandwidth like regular NICs do.

Ethernet controllers integrated in this fashion are connected directly to the system chipset's I/O bus, which is typically much faster than the PCI bus (in the case of the Sis 735, the integrated audio controller, USB controller, IDE controller, and ethernet controller each get dedicated bandwidth to the front-side bus). This is the same idea that nearly ALL chipsets handle integrated IDE controllers: the integrated IDE bus doesn't compete for PCI bus bandwidth, unlike add-on PCI IDE controllers or external chipset controllers (like Promise's IDE Raid) which DO use the PCI bus.

 

[Nothinman]

But even so it won't make a real difference unless you're using a gigabit connection.