NIC question

Is there a benefit on using a NIC over the mobo one for playing online games? I have recieved many different opinions on the matter , what do you folks think?

Any ideas for a great NIC i can purchase?

Wrong, it depends on your motherboard. Check your vendor's website for the full spec's on your model. Older mobo's and the low cost ones will often make use of the CPU. However I'll go out on a limb and say that most, if not all, of the highend mainboards especially any with giga ports have their own controller and do not impact the CPU in any way. No more so than the IDE controller needs the CPU's help. Also, in such a case it is likely that your CPU is easily fast enough (and has cycles left over) to process all the side items such as network traffic, the active things in your system tray, and all the little hardware device management and Windows coordinating activity that goes on behind the scenes. And since the port is designed for a 100MB network it sure won't be stressed by your 6MB cable modem bandwidth.

After all, while you're in a game or other application, the rest of the system doesn't come to a complete halt. Even with a completely CPU-bound game, your CPU is still working on other tasks in the background unrelated to the game. If you have a mid to high end mobo just use the onboard. Buy a $20 NIC card if it makes you feel better but you won't accomplish anything.