Intel Gigabit NICs

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Don
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Just bought two of these, one for my desktop, another for my server.

Network file transfer speeds jumped from ~90MB/s to 112MB/s

Pretty much fully saturating my network now, well impressed with them :)

These are the ones I went for EXPI9301CTBLK



When I install my 24 port switch, I'll get another 2 of them for my server and team them together to get 3Gbps :)


Old setup was 2x onboard realtek NICs
 
Just picked up a quad port Pro 1000 PT for £50 on ebay, woof.

Should have ordered my others from there, didn't think.. I tend to avoid ebay, but server pulled hardware is fine by me.


It's worth noting that until I upgraded to Intel at both ends, there was very little (if any) speed increase.
 
If you're going for one with more than one port. You'll need a managed switch to take full advantage of it..
 
MarcLister said:
So definitely worth it over Marvell Yukon NICs? I guess that any onboard NIC won't be as good as a dedicated NIC card? You say single port versions, how much are the double port versions? Are they worth the extra money? How would a double port NIC card be better over a single port NIC?

The £15 ones on Ebay are all from the US and there's £8-10 of delivery to pay.
Click to expand...

With a double port, if you've got a managed switch (typically £150+), you can 'team' two ports on the switch together.

So you'd connect 2x cables up to both ports and could set it to appear as a single 2Gb link.


Handy if you've got multiple machines accessing multiple files on that machine.



Or if you had 2 machines with the same setup (ie, both with teamed 2Gb links), then they would be able to transfer ~225MB/s between each other.
 
jh30uk said:
With Intel on-board NIC's you do not need to plug in 2 cables to Team them, its done internally.

Intel NIC are very good and on-board in general has came a long way.

I would assume the add in cards may be the same.
Click to expand...

Eh? How does it pump more data down the port on the switch side? Surely you need each port connected up for the link to work at the proper speed.

MarcLister said:
OK, I don't think I would benefit enough to justify getting managed switches at home then. I'll get the EXPI9301CTBLK some time and see what fun I can have.

Btw do you get your network file transfer speeds from the Windows file copying window or do you have a program/utility to measure them more accurately?
Click to expand...



I just used Windows file transfer on a 30gb file
 
I'm pretty sure you're incorrect there.. Did you have anything to test the speed of the connection? It may have reported as 2Gb because of the team, but without 2x cables going to the 'other device', it would only run at 1Gb..

I stand to be corrected though :)
 
When you team a fibre switch to another, you have to use two cables, because it's 2x ports= twice the speed.


This must be the case when it comes to Intel's ethernet adapters too, each individual port is still limited to 1Gb
 
Well that escalated quickly.

Now I have..

Quad port Intel in my file server
Single port Intel in my gaming pc
Single port Intel in my media centre

Eyeing up 24 port managed gigabit switches :D
 
You can team multiple connections together like a group, so it appears as one 4Gb connection.

Need a smart/managed switch in order to do this.


Think of it like raid 0,but for your network.
 
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