Onboard Intel NIC chip Vs. Marvell and Realtek

DaveJ-UK · 8 Nov 2011 at 20:41

Removed

KIA · 8 Nov 2011 at 21:07

Intel NICs are often well supported by Linux and FreeBSD. Perfect for pfSense. Bigfoot is just a waste of £££.

mattyfez · 8 Nov 2011 at 22:45

As above, the CPU overhead is tiny to the point it's not worth worrying about.

Tealc · 8 Nov 2011 at 22:45

CPUs are more than fast enough these days to not be concerned about networking tasks. In some test I glanced at about a year ago the reviewer saw a one millisecond advantage by using the expensive card. If it were 20ms then I'm sure they'd have lots of customers but for 1ms it's just not worth tying up a slot.

jaybee · 8 Nov 2011 at 22:47

Intel NICs certainly tend to be the best for throughput.

bledd · 8 Nov 2011 at 23:23

jaybee said:
Intel NICs certainly tend to be the best for throughput.

In real world terms, unless you're transferring a heck of a lot of data, there's no point in spending the money on one for a desktop user imo.

jaybee · 9 Nov 2011 at 08:36

bledd. said:
In real world terms, unless you're transferring a heck of a lot of data, there's no point in spending the money on one for a desktop user imo.

Sure, if you want to backup from a desktop to a server and they both had Intel NICs, vs Realtek onboard, there would be a benefit is what I meant.

Duke · 9 Nov 2011 at 09:25

jaybee said:
Sure, if you want to backup from a desktop to a server and they both had Intel NICs, vs Realtek onboard, there would be a benefit is what I meant.

Yep, this is only when you're going to notice the difference.

J.B · 9 Nov 2011 at 11:20

jaybee said:
Sure, if you want to backup from a desktop to a server and they both had Intel NICs, vs Realtek onboard, there would be a benefit is what I meant.

This is why I spashed out on two Intel NICs (think they cost about £20 in total). If you are going straight out onto the internet then you will see no difference. If you are communicating internally then it can help.

Also, CPU network process is negligible