Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Network Interface Cards > Integrated LAN vs NIC
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Laserguided   03-31-2003 at 11:33:35 AM

I'm going to be upgrading in the future and I was wondering what the best setup would be concerning LAN. I've noticed that a lot of boards have integrated LAN chips nowadays. Are these better than having a separted NIC?

There seems to me to be more actual hardware on an NIC than the single controller chip they use in integrated LAN. Does this affect performance? Do separate NICs reduce the workload on the host CPU than do integrated solutions? How does an integrated chip connect to the CPU? Does it still use the PCI BUS or does it free up bandwidth there? I'm wondering about this because I've got SCSI adapters and plan to have a SCSI RAID on the limited 133mb/s PCI 2.2 BUS.

Another thing I was thinking about was the bandwidth required by Gigabit Ethernet. I haven't gone indepth about it but wouldn't this be bottle necked by PCI? Would the integrated chip circumvent this bottle neck?

So far the obvious benefits I can see are that the integrated chip is cheaper and it frees up a PCI slot.

The disadvantage I see so far is that the single chip solution relies on the CPU to deal with operations.

Does anyone know?

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jihiggs   03-31-2003 at 08:49:25 PM
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im sure a lot of the cheaper integrated nics rely on the cpu to do a lot. but with cpus now days, its not a problem. a nic with its own controler will run you about 40 bucks. the cheap 10 dollar nics dont have their own. i think the nforce2 mobos with dual nics have a 3com 3c905x wich has its own controler. gigabit is still far away from usefull on a home computer. its mainly for servers with 64bit pci slots that will see benefit.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

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umheint0   04-15-2003 at 04:24:33 AM
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Actually, one is a 3Com controller, and the other is an nVidia controller. The top one (by the ps/2 ports) is the 3Com, and the lower one (by the speaker outputs) is the nVidia.

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jihiggs   04-15-2003 at 05:16:29 AM
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is that not what i said?

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

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umheint0   04-15-2003 at 05:55:17 AM
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You forgot to mention the nForce's own integrated controller. There are two different onboard controllers: one for each NIC.

XP 2500+ Barton @ 2256Mhz
A7N8X Dlx
2x512MB Corsair PC3200
MSI GF3Ti 500 @ 265/570
16x DVD-ROM
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Onboard audio
3DMark 2001 SE - 10528

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