all420
11-25-01, 11:35 AM
I am in the market for a new NIC. I was shopping around I noticed several different types of cards. Threre are cards such as the ones from Linksys that go for $18-20, cards such as the ones from Intel that go for around $50, and more expensive enterprise cards. I know that the enterprise cards (i.e. fibre optic, etc.) are definatly higher performance, but what about the two lower prive ranges? Do the Intels have a bigger onboard processor, better circuit design, engineering tricks, etc? My mom worked at Intel for 25 years before she retired last spring (it sucks because I could get any Intel product 75% off, even mobos, and procs :mad:). She said that in benchmarks the Intel cards performed better, but that it might have changed since she left. Has is? It the difference in perfomance worth 30 or so dollars? Would it be better just to buy two Linksys NIC's and link them together? I will be doing a lot of networking (NFS, transfering backups to other comps, etc), and a lot of surfing the net. The computer the nic is for will probably be a server too, so performance is pretty good. Thanks in advance.