Will a Dedicated Ethernet Card Give Me an Advantage Over On-board?

[Equator21]

This is for my older computer, a Dell GX1 PIII. My internet download speed is only about 30mb.
Will an ethernet card such as the 3Com 3C905-TX give me any advantages in surfing speed, browser-opening speed, etc? Or are these add-on cards solely for when and if the present connection doesn't work?
My reasoning is that the new card might free up processor speed by assuming network connection
duties. My interface is PCI.

Dell GX1 Optiplex
600mHz PIII
768 RAM
20 GB HD 7200 rpm
Matrox G550 video
CT4870 audio

 

[kanewolf]

No. Even an OLD onboard ethernet would support 100Mbit. Your 30Mbit WAN connection will be fully utilized. IF you had network storage and needed gigabit speed then an add-in could benefit.

 

[boosted1g]

No, addon card will make zero difference for you.

The motherboard's nic does not use up any of your cpu processing power vs a dedicated board.
They both have a chip on them that then needs to talk to your OS through drivers, in this regards it is exactly the same thing.

The only reson to get a dedicated card is if you wanted 1gbps card for LAN file transfers and what not (and at that point I dont know how much beyond the 100mbps your P3 genre pc can handle)>

 

[Equator21]

Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I appreciate your help, and that of kanewolf.