My HTPC Thread

[Byock]

The 6800 Line has the ability, but Leech and I were unable to find any cards, or stores that sold the connectors.

Looks unused at this point.

The converter boxes work very well, but they are pricey at the $200 range.

[Paddy]

so if you should not use PCI gigabit NICs, what should you use?

[Chucky Cheese]

paddy

i think what has been suggested is that pci gigabit lan cards do not achieve gigabit speeds because they share the bandwidth of the pci bus.

built in-doesn't suffer this...i read about this somewhere...i just can't find it at the moment.

i like my NAS but it is noisy(PS fan) and i'm sure that the smallnes of it doesn't help either.

[VJ]

Yep, built in (on the mainboard) GB NICs are put directly on the northbridge (or is it southbridge?). Anyway, they are not on the PCI bus, so they don't suffer the PCI limitations.

Just to be complete: if you have a serverboard with PCI-X slots (up to 133 MHz, 64 bit), you can use GB nics to their full potential. On those boards, the onboard NICs (and SCSI controllers, it is a similar story) are put on the PCI-X bus (or on one of th PCI-X busses if the mainboard has more than one).


Jörg

[Paddy]

I'm not sure if my proliant server has PCI-X slots... but they are 64bit... not that it really matters as its the only option!

Sorry to hujack the thread!

[Marshmallowman]

A 64bit slot will do the job, either 66mhz pci or 33mhz 64bit should give you enough bandwidth for Gbit networking.

You might even have 66mhz/64bit.

It is *probably* easier/cheaper to find a 66mhz(capable) PCI Gbit card than a 64bit Gbit card.

Might have a look around to see how probable it really is

Well it seem easier to find 64bit ones

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gigeth32bit/gig-eth-32bit-2.html