Matrox networking card? Is it good?

[fury]

My 2 cents

At work, everyone uses NT4 and 3Com NICs.

I brought my "old" machine in to play Half-Life. It has a D-Link 530.

My latency was 10 to 15 ms lower than anyone else's.

FWIW.

[HedsSpaz]

Ok OK wait a sec my head is starting to burst from all the opinions

I did warn you.

[Bohrn]

I use a D-link PCI nic. It has a Intel21040 chip on it (or so winME says) It works better than the nic the cable guys gave me, but I still get higher than average pings. Maybe that'll be my next upgrade??

[Pace]

Maybe it's snobbish or whatever, but I certainly feel a lot happier with a 3Com in it.

btw, why do all the big OEMs use Intel and 3Com? Yet they buy cheapass monitors, floppy drives, CDs, hard drives, ATi graphics? They must have a reason to spend extra on a good NIC.

I've found though, that if you're system is completely stable, with all reliable hardware, that you've got a good chance of getting a RealTek to work. Any little problems such as conflicts and your chances fall. I've had fairly good experience with this, especially at LAN games, when I effectively setup every PC to network!

Paul.

[swr]

The Matrox FastNIC 10/100 uses the PNIC 82c168/82c169 chipset, which is a DEC Tulip clone. The PNIC chipset itself has a bunch of peculiarities, probably more than any other DEC Tulip clone. However, I think most or all of them can be worked around in the driver.</P>

Based on what I know of the chipset I wouldn't recommend it. However, considering the number of people who absolutely swear by cards that are total crap, you can probably get away with running these. At least the DEC Tulip architecture doesn't suck.</P>

I would recommend the Intel or 3Com 100Mbps cards though. You can get these cards second-hand really cheap, and they are great cards. 3Com has produced some crap in the past but anything recent (most/all of their 100Mbps cards I think) from them should be good. And I don't think Intel has ever produced a crappy NIC.</P>

The RealTek-based cards are the absolute bottom of the bottom end. Their DMA engine sucks so badly that they may as well just be using PIO. This means they need to waste a bunch of CPU cycles when moving large amounts of data. I've heard of other problems as well but haven't seem them first-hand as I don't use these cards for anything even remotely important.</P>

Be aware that most cards that use the RealTek chipset don't say so anywhere in the name. Unfortunately his chipset is <em>very</em> prolific now. Nearly all of the cheap 100Mbps cards use it, and a number of manufacturers have replaced old models which worked fine with newer ones using RealTek chips. For example, the D-Link DFE-530TX used a VIA Rhine chipset (another one similar to the DEC Tulip) that didn't suck, but the DFE-530TX+ uses RealTek crap. They really should've called it the "-", not "+". </P>

[Jon P. Inghram]

I just ordered a 905C-TX, and I need to know if it's ok sharing an IRQ with the USB controller. I'm using a CUBX, and it's dreadfully short on IRQ's as it is. The cheapo SMC card seems to work ok, but it's not a bus mastering card like the 3com.

Slot 1 shares with AGP, 2 with the CMD UDMA/66 controller, 3 with PCI 6, 4 with USB and PCI 5.

Right now the SBLive's in 3, and the SMC's in 5 (it's not bus mastering so it doesn't care that it's in a slaved slot).


0 System timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 Creative SB Live!
3 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
4 Communications Port (COM1)
5 SMC EZ Card PCI 10 Adapter
5 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
5 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus
10 Primary CMD Ultra DMA Bus Master IDE Controller
10 CMD PCI-0648 Ultra DMA IDE Controller
10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
11 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead Max - English
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
12 Standard PS/2 Port Mouse
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller

[Wombat]

I have a KTI (never heard of them) PCI NIC based on the DEC 21140 chip. Linux and Windows drivers both work great. There are a few [QODA] servers in the city (NOT on my college's network) and I average a 22 ping to them.

My girlfriend's RealTek card is an utter piece of crap, and finding drivers that it worked with was a complete nightmare. The drivers from RealTek's site are a big mistake.

[SteveC]

I've had experience with Matrox hubs - nice units! However, they keep stopping making the thing you've just bought and drop all support....

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Technoid]

My 905-TX works great in acpi mode in W2K sharing IRQ with most of the stuff in my can.
But it never wanted to share anything on my old BX board!
But Asus Mobos has a god reputation you'l probaply get away with it

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Intel PIII-800/133MHz MSI 6337
G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
SBlive
256 MB RAM CAS2
43GB HDD Space!(Actual 60GB) (30+30 IBM DTLA 30GB drives)
Pioneer 104S DVD 10x CD 40x SLOT IN
SONY CRX140E 8/4/32 CDRW

[Jon P. Inghram]

Seems to be working just fine sharing 5 with the USB controller. And it also seems I ordered the 905B-TX, not 905C-TX, not sure what the difference is.

[Randy Simons]

The difference between the C and B is the WakeOnLan. The C has it, the B hasn't. Not sure though.

The B and C both have the Parallel Tasking 2 chipset, which should offload the rest of the system a bit more than the plain 905. (I wonder why they didn't gave it another number...)

[joelau]

I'm using 3C905C for PC, 3C980B for server, 3com 8 ports 10/100 switch.
They are the most solid NIC i had ever used. Better than the Intel PRO/100+ cards which are used in my office. Linksys NIC are lousy(Lots of retry errors).

Regards.

[xortam]

The 3C905B-TX does support WakeOnLAN. I know because I found it annoying and had to disable it on my system. I imagine the 3Com site would reveal the differences between the B and C versions.

[Dr Mordrid]

I've got 8 Linksys LNE100TX NIC's and one Linksys BEFSR-4 Cable/DSL router/switch/firewall.

All have worked out extremely well for me, especailly that router....

Dr. Mordrid