Will using the onboard ethernet in the Abit IC7-G have an effect on performance?

[gopunk]

i remember back in the day, there were "winmodems" that were basically modems that used processing power from the CPU... this was cheaper but resulted in bad performance. is this what the "Gigabyte Ethernet" onboard lan will do? i guess the same question goes for the onboard audio... will i be better off buying separate ethernet and audio cards?

you leave hardware for a couple years and when you come back they have this fancy SATA stuff... 800 mhz fsb... *shakes head* 😛

anyhow, thanks!

 

[Nebor]

The IC7-G uses the intel CSA, which uses a seperate BUS for it's communications. You should actually see better performance from the onbaord than from a PCI ethernet...

 

[Dahak]

not it will not affect preformance in any way, if anything you might get a bit better preformance becasue the gigabit chip is on its own bus(CSA) and not on the pci bus

 

[gopunk]

oh ok.... so i'm kind of ignorant on hardware stuffs, isn't a bus just like a pipeline for data? i guess i thought there would have to be some processing done to the data...

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: gopunk
oh ok.... so i'm kind of ignorant on hardware stuffs, isn't a bus just like a pipeline for data? i guess i thought there would have to be some processing done to the data...

bumppity... just curious here

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: gopunk
oh ok.... so i'm kind of ignorant on hardware stuffs, isn't a bus just like a pipeline for data? i guess i thought there would have to be some processing done to the data...

bumppity... just curious here

Well, what he is trying to say is that the ethernet port uses the CSA bus. That results in dedicated bandwidth which is greater than say if you used a standard PCI ethernet adapter. These days, processors are so fast you really don't notice a difference. One other thing to remember that the chip handling the ethernet port is one that you are likely to find on a standard PCI network adapter.

As for audio, it can vary from program to program. The real difference between the onboard audio and say, an Audigy 2, would be the quality of the sound. Some of the tests at Tom's Hardware Guide showed that on some motherboards the onboard audio performed better than a seperate audio card, but not by much.

Unless you go looking for a very high end $200 + or $300+ ethernet card, which in itself won't make that much of a difference in cpu usage going from like 2 or 3% to 0% for a full transfer. On the audio side of things, performance will not change much, but sound quality can.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Nebor
The IC7-G uses the intel CSA, which uses a seperate BUS for it's communications. You should actually see better performance from the onbaord than from a PCI ethernet...

The better performance will only show when you are utilizing the PCI bus to the max and trying to transfer lots of files at the same time.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: AgaBooga

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: gopunk
oh ok.... so i'm kind of ignorant on hardware stuffs, isn't a bus just like a pipeline for data? i guess i thought there would have to be some processing done to the data...

bumppity... just curious here

Well, what he is trying to say is that the ethernet port uses the CSA bus. That results in dedicated bandwidth which is greater than say if you used a standard PCI ethernet adapter. These days, processors are so fast you really don't notice a difference. One other thing to remember that the chip handling the ethernet port is one that you are likely to find on a standard PCI network adapter.

ah i see... so there is actually a chip dedicated to the ethernet port for the onboard.... thanks!

As for audio, it can vary from program to program. The real difference between the onboard audio and say, an Audigy 2, would be the quality of the sound. Some of the tests at Tom's Hardware Guide showed that on some motherboards the onboard audio performed better than a seperate audio card, but not by much.

Unless you go looking for a very high end $200 + or $300+ ethernet card, which in itself won't make that much of a difference in cpu usage going from like 2 or 3% to 0% for a full transfer. On the audio side of things, performance will not change much, but sound quality can.

hmmm... maybe i'll just stick to onboard then... this computer's gonna be for my mom, and she doesn't listen to much music. great, thanks for the help 🙂