Integrated network, or pci card?

[rylan]

I'm looking into getting a new motherboard for an high end Athlon system. Most of the good boards out there have the option of integrated 10/100 network (usually Realtek). If I stayed with the pci card option, it would be a 3COM 3c905b 10/100 card.
Do the pci cards perform better than the intergrated nics?

[az]

Get a mainboard with Gigabit ethernet. MUCH cheaper than a separate card, and doesn't hog the PCI bus

AZ

[Ribbit]

I'm not aware of any Athlon boards with PCI-X, so unless I'm mistaken Gb-Ethernet will hog the bus still.

Some/most Tyan dual-Athlon boards have 3c905s built into them (they call them 3c920s though, because that's the name of the chip).

[az]

Can't they be connected through something else than a PCI bus?

AZ

[Ribbit]

Sure, but the motherboard chipset needs to support something else for it to be connected through

For Gb-Ethernet, that something else is normally PCI-X. I don't know of any Athlon chipsets with PCI-X support. Theoretically you could build the Gb-Ethernet into the southbridge and then it could use the NB-SB connection, but I don't know of any chipsets which do that either.

BTW rylan, it appears that the nForce2 ethernet is a built-in 3Com.

[Kruzin]

My mobo has an integrated realtek LAN on it, and I saw a noticable gain in performance when I put my trusty old 3c905b-tx in.

[MultimediaMan]

The only Athlon motherboards out there with professional-grade NICs on them are Dual Athlons at the present time.

The MSI K7D-L Master comes with an integrated 3COM NIC chipset, as do the Tyan 760MPX Thunder series.

Ironically, Gigabyte's Dual AMD board uses an Intel 82559 Pro100+ Management adapter chipset for it's onboard NIC.

Some people have had issues with the Integrated 3COMs: the ASICs do not appear to be stable all of the time. However, the Intel 82559 ASIC is well-proven.

Regarding Gigabit ethernet: you don't need PCI-X until you start talking about dual Port GoC cards. All of the aforementioned boards have two 3.3 Volt 64Bit 66MHz Slots if you want a full-bandwidth GoC connection.

There is a persistant rumor that AMD is readying a refresh of the MPX chipset with 333/400 MHz FSB for the newer Bartons in case the Opteron doesn't pan out. The new Barton MPs are very cool running in any case at 266MHz.

[Evildead666]

The A7N8X Deluxe has 2 NIC's integrated.
One in the Southbridge, by Nvidia, and another by 3Com, onboard.

The southbridge one should be faster (but only by a small amout). The 3Com will probably use up less cpu though...even then it won't be huge...

[MultimediaMan]

My bad, missed that Asus...Thanks ED666!!!

[dZeus]

i875 chipset with a CSA lan chip, like the Intel 82547EI, won't hog the PCI bus while providing superior througput to 33 Mhz/32bit PCI based solutions.

Also see http://www.intel.com/design/network/...rs/82547ei.htm

[WyWyWyWy]

Hi,

My onboard nic is 3COM 3c905b.
My pci card nic is realtek.
(completely opposite to that of you)

And I found that my 3com performs better.
There are less "spikes".
CPU utilisation is about the same (i.e. 0% when normal internet usage)

But some 3com chipset is not that easy to setup under Linux or other OSes, while realtek ones are universally supported (strange!).

[Wombat]

Originally posted by WyWyWyWy

But some 3com chipset is not that easy to setup under Linux or other OSes, while realtek ones are universally supported (strange!).

There's a reason for that. 3com has a history of revising their chipsets, but not changing their packaging or revision numbers at ALL to reflect that change. It's really hard to write drivers for something when you can't even tell how many versions of it there are, or which version you have.

[MultimediaMan]

I'll second that Wombat...that's what bit Tyan and MSI in the @$$ when they started using 3Com 90whatever ASICs in their 760MPX motherboards.

I used a 905C in my Chaintech 7KDD for awhile and had a hell of a time keeping it stable: yet using Linksys, Intel or Adaptec NICs yielded no problems whatsoever.

I'm not knocking 3COM, but I haven't had much luck with them.

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Evildead666
The A7N8X Deluxe has 2 NIC's integrated.
One in the Southbridge, by Nvidia, and another by 3Com, onboard.

The southbridge one should be faster (but only by a small amout). The 3Com will probably use up less cpu though...even then it won't be huge...

As I said before, the nForce2 ethernet is apparently actually a built-in 3Com.

From http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=nf2_biz
A trusted connectivity solution: NVIDIA nForce2 platforms provide integrated 3Com™ 10/100 Ethernet, trusted by IT professionals around the world. This allows NVIDIA nForce2-based corporate PCs to easily integrate into the corporate environment.

[XHotKolaX]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
The MSI K7D-L Master comes with an integrated 3COM NIC chipset, as do the Tyan 760MPX Thunder series.

The K7D-L uses an Intel one as well. Not sure whot model number but I know it's the Intel E100CE. MSI's ethernet driver on the CD refused to install for me so I had to go looking online.

Come to that, ASUS's Driver CD was a bit of a pain at times too. If not the driver, it was one of the utilities.