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Thread: (Wired!) network card recommendations

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    bored out of my tiny mind malfunction's Avatar
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    (Wired!) network card recommendations

    Folks,

    I am currently using a 'wazzy' gaming/marketing motherboard (Gigabyte G1 Sniper - LGA 1366) which has a 'wazzy' gaming/marketing "killer NIC" on it and the long and short of it is that the drivers and management tools are awful - the management tool crashes every 5 seconds and the drivers don't play nicely with virtualisation (amongst other things), so I think I'm going to take the plunge and buy a dedicated NIC and disable the onboard one. My first suggestion would be this:

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...er-oem-version

    Or perhaps something like this:

    http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IBM-Intel-...item35cad9410c

    (fairly cheap 2nd hand, horribly expensive new)

    But I'd like your suggestions please.
    Last edited by malfunction; 24-08-2013 at 11:00 AM.

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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: (Wired!) network card recommendations

    The Intel one is already better than most. I would have been tempted by a cheapy realtek based card like this one which I'm sure would be fine for home use and it's a well known chip so drivers are quite well optimised:
    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/edima...etwork-adapter

    But the intel one is a step up.

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    Re: (Wired!) network card recommendations

    I think I have that Edimax Realtek based card in my home server for the second ethernet port. Works fine, have used it in Win7 before it ended up in the Linux box.

    The Intel board should be stable as well, but I'm not sure it will actually be any faster even if you are pushing gigabit speeds all day out of it. If like most people it just has to keep up with your broadband connection, I really don't think it matters.

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    Evil Monkey! MrJim's Avatar
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    Re: (Wired!) network card recommendations

    Quote Originally Posted by malfunction View Post
    Folks,

    I am currently using a 'wazzy' gaming/marketing motherboard (Gigabyte G1 Sniper - LGA 1366) which has a 'wazzy' gaming/marketing "killer NIC" on it and the long and short of it is that the drivers and management tools are awful - the management tool crashes every 5 seconds and the drivers don't play nicely with virtualisation (amongst other things), so I think I'm going to take the plunge and buy a dedicated NIC and disable the onboard one.
    It's a bit ironic that such a 'feature' of the motherboard should be the source of so many problems for you. Just about every review of Killer NIC I've ever read has concluded that it has little measurable impact on network bandwidth or latency. I'm amazed Gigabyte are using it on their motherboards, but I suppose it's for marketing more than anything else.

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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: (Wired!) network card recommendations

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbobgod1969 View Post
    It's a bit ironic that such a 'feature' of the motherboard should be the source of so many problems for you. Just about every review of Killer NIC I've ever read has concluded that it has little measurable impact on network bandwidth or latency. I'm amazed Gigabyte are using it on their motherboards, but I suppose it's for marketing more than anything else.
    They only use it on their flashy gaming ones - which are usually more flashy for flashy sake than otherwise. Their normal boards use the realtek gigabit chip (albeit an earlier version of it than the edimax card for the 1366 boards)

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    bored out of my tiny mind malfunction's Avatar
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    • malfunction's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Gigabyte G1.Sniper (with daft heatsinks and annoying Killer NIC)
      • CPU:
      • Xeon X5670 (6 core LGA 1366) @ 4.4GHz
      • Memory:
      • 48GB DDR3 1600 (6 * 8GB)
      • Storage:
      • 1TB 840 Evo + 1TB 850 Evo
      • Graphics card(s):
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      • PSU:
      • Antec True Power New 750W
      • Case:
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      • Operating System:
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    Re: (Wired!) network card recommendations

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    The Intel one is already better than most. I would have been tempted by a cheapy realtek based card like this one which I'm sure would be fine for home use and it's a well known chip so drivers are quite well optimised:
    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/edima...etwork-adapter

    But the intel one is a step up.
    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    I think I have that Edimax Realtek based card in my home server for the second ethernet port. Works fine, have used it in Win7 before it ended up in the Linux box.

    The Intel board should be stable as well, but I'm not sure it will actually be any faster even if you are pushing gigabit speeds all day out of it. If like most people it just has to keep up with your broadband connection, I really don't think it matters.
    Thanks guys - I was going with a "you can't go wrong with Intel" theory, seeing as almost all of the x86 servers I've worked with have used Intel based ethernet controllers - it's not much of a premium / not much to spend overall (compared to say a tier 1 graphics card), plus I imagine drivers for it are just 'there' in most OS's. I'm not maxing out my connection regularly though I do only have a small SSD in my desktop PC and most of my files (including several VM images) are on my NAS box so my peak util is probably fairly high (at least while the VMs boot up).

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbobgod1969 View Post
    It's a bit ironic that such a 'feature' of the motherboard should be the source of so many problems for you. Just about every review of Killer NIC I've ever read has concluded that it has little measurable impact on network bandwidth or latency. I'm amazed Gigabyte are using it on their motherboards, but I suppose it's for marketing more than anything else.
    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    They only use it on their flashy gaming ones - which are usually more flashy for flashy sake than otherwise. Their normal boards use the realtek gigabit chip (albeit an earlier version of it than the edimax card for the 1366 boards)
    It's not a motherboard I would have bought with my own money (I won it in a competition) - some of the feature are downright stupid (gun part shaped heatsinks? I'd sooner have ones that are efficient, thanks)
    Last edited by malfunction; 24-08-2013 at 04:17 PM.

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