Gigabit Ethernet PCI Cards Over Onboard

[AngelfireUk83]

Can someone tell my mate here next to me he wouldn't see any difference upgradeing over onboard ethernet to a PCI Gigabite Ethernet card. I tell him it's all about your ISP if you want to increase download and upload speeds which our ISP puts a limit on.

He has a ASROCK nForce2 motherboard so if I see it as pointless he would too.

 

[eaglescouter]

Gig ethernet is great for transferring files on your side of the router if the other equipment also supports gig ethernet.

As for making a difference in internet performance, consider this:

I have 10 Meg download speed. Which is faster than a business class T1, but it is not gigabit speed...... our internet is actually quite slow compared to our ability to transmit data on the lan side.

 

[Cheator]

He will see a bit of a speed increase, most likly, but not due to it being gigabit. It would be due to the fact that its not onboard. Onboard nics use the CPU, where as a seperate nic (a good one anyway) will have its own processor on it to handle that stuff.

So if you get a really good 10 mbit nic, you will see the same jump in performance.

 

[klingens]

A Pentium 90 can fully saturate a 100MBit link. So how could I measure if a PCI NIC helps on CPU usage, especially when doing stuff in the WAN side with a few MBit/s max speeds?

Also, what kind of CPU processing would a NIC need? There are TCP offloading engines yes, but unless you invest $100 or usually more, you won't see this in your PCI NIC. If you can find it in PCI NICs at all (mostly its server class hardware, PCI-X and lately PCI-E)

 

[AngelfireUk83]

Well currently the max connection we have is 3mbps and my download speed if from a good server is usally 365kbps. Our upload speed is limited to 0.50kpbs cause the ISP has put a limiter on it. They are introducing 8mbps but it'll expand into our area from December the 4th and it's £10 cheaper than what where paying now for 3mpbs.

I am looking into a Ethernet card myself well I was but at the moment I want a new set of RAM 2GB. And a new graphics card a 7600-7800 APG and a raptor 36GB for my main XP.

Can anyone also recommend a PCI card with it's wn CPU or whatever just to shut him up!!!

 

[CreePinG_DeatH]

You don't need a PCI NIC. The Ethernet ports on your motherboard will be fine. I believe Klingens just said that a Pentium 90 can fully saturate a 100 MBit link. Therefore, any CPU at a Pentium 90 speed or above can do the same. Since your Internet connection is less than 1/20 of that 100MBit speed, you will not see a difference between onboard and pci NIC's.

 

[Cheator]

A Pentium 90 can fully saturate a 100MBit link. So how could I measure if a PCI NIC helps on CPU usage, especially when doing stuff in the WAN side with a few MBit/s max speeds?

Also, what kind of CPU processing would a NIC need? There are TCP offloading engines yes, but unless you invest $100 or usually more, you won't see this in your PCI NIC. If you can find it in PCI NICs at all (mostly its server class hardware, PCI-X and lately PCI-E)

Whenever i am transfering something with my onboard nics, I get close to 13% cpu usage. If I start using my pc for something like games or something, it slows down. Infact anything using the cpu will slow down the nic.

With a dedicated nic, I show no CPU usage, and it never slows down.

 

[AngelfireUk83]

With my 3mbps connection which is my onboard ethernet port to my Link AG241 router I am happy with my 365kbps download speed to be honest. It's better than 4kbps when I was on dial-up oh the god the torture just my mate has been going on forever about it.

I might see a difference when we upgrade to 8mbps after 4th December but I ain't getting my hopes up it will be massive.

 

[CreePinG_DeatH]

Whenever i am transfering something with my onboard nics, I get close to 13% cpu usage.

Do you mean transferring files between computers on your network/side of the router? Or over the Internet?

 

[Cheator]

Do you mean transferring files between computers on your network/side of the router? Or over the Internet?

Both. 1 morso than the other

 

[CreePinG_DeatH]

With my 3mbps connection which is my onboard ethernet port to my Link AG241 router I am happy with my 365kbps download speed to be honest. It's better than 4kbps when I was on dial-up oh the god the torture just my mate has been going on forever about it.

I might see a difference when we upgrade to 8mbps after 4th December but I ain't getting my hopes up it will be massive.

Well 365 KB/s equals 2920 kbps or 2.920 mbps. That is pretty good if you have a 3mbps limit.

 

[freakdiablo]

There was an article in Maximum PC magazine about this. yes, onboard uses the cpu, but for gaming and stuff, you wouldn't see any difference. That is, unless you get a 8800gtx and play with all the video settings on low so the cpu is the bottleneck.