Intel Gigabit NICs

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.
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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.
 
bledd. said:
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.
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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?
 
If you're looking at dual or quad port NICs you need to check your available PCIe slots. The multiport NICs tend to be PCIe x4 rather than PCIe x1 so they won't fit into the usually spare x1 slots.
 
bremen1874 said:
I think you'll find it has 2 PCIe slots (x16 and x1).
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just testing you guys (oops :p) ... i always thought it had 1 of each slots.

nothing on the tv tonight so installed the Intel Pro 1000GT card and made no difference on download speeds but was more of a consistent speed averaging 11.2MB/s according to sab. Whilst downloading i noticed that the CPU is running at 90%+ so i guess that is my problem.

On the plus side i found my old SSD in my parts box so going to install this into my microserver.
 
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.
 
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.
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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?
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I just used Windows file transfer on a 30gb file
 
My past Asus Rogs had 2 Intel NIC's (this Z87 does not).

It connects them internally when you install/run the software, I only had to connect 1 cable (to primary NIC AFAIR) and then tis seen as a 2Gbits/s connection.

At 1st I thought this is weird but its no different connecting internally than a cable in the socket.
 
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 :)
 
Nope, just messing about, no other PC's and ISP was 120Mb/s at that time.

Would need Gigler ISP in Bournemouth even then its ADSL so a good bit under 1Gb/s after overheads.

I am sure I read up on it before hand as I though "this cannot be right"

It is paossible I suppose if you have another device that cannot Team internally you may have to use 2 Cables, not sure as only ever did so on the modern Intel's
 
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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
 
You can trunk 4096 VLANs over a single Cat6 link, it doesn't make it a 4096Gb link. Each cable gives you 1Gb, you were seeing 2Gb reported in Windows because you teamed 2x 1Gb ports, not because the card does magic with the cable.
 
Caged said:
You can trunk 4096 VLANs over a single Cat6 link, it doesn't make it a 4096Gb link. Each cable gives you 1Gb, you were seeing 2Gb reported in Windows because you teamed 2x 1Gb ports, not because the card does magic with the cable.
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so the limit is still 1Gb on the cable/port?

Also can you use a dual port split to two different vms:
 
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Caged said:
You can trunk 4096 VLANs over a single Cat6 link, it doesn't make it a 4096Gb link. Each cable gives you 1Gb, you were seeing 2Gb reported in Windows because you teamed 2x 1Gb ports, not because the card does magic with the cable.
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I get that but the Cat6 Cable can do the speed.

So surely if I had 2 PC's both with 2 modern On-board Intel NIC's and I Teamed them as I have done before and you agree it does become 2Gbits/s, it would work with a Cat6 cable between them.
 
If you have a teamed connection without all the cables connected it'll just run as a degraded connection. There's no magic going on that'll get more than 1Gbps down a single Gigabit link.
 
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Still does not any sense to why you can and the Intel info on their site shows how to Team 2 NIC's if you are not going to benefit using 1 port/cable.

I see no difference if its using 2 external ports or internally linking the chips and using 1 port if the ports can handle the bandwidth.

Again if both have same set up at each end (2 PC's both with 2 Intel Teamed NIC's) I see no reason it would not work and if this Z87 was not cut back and only have 1 NIC I could test it before I strip my Z68 down (2NIC's).

I would like to know for sure also.
 
You would need to ask Intel, I only followed the info and the port is same port as on a higher capacity NIC isn't it?

So the Intel 4Gb NIC's with heating/fan cannot do that speed from 1 port?
 
I don't know what part of the data sheet gave you that impression. The quad port NICs are 4x1Gb links. Each physical link can run at 1Gb. When you team them in the driver it might present it to your OS as a single 4Gb port, but that is assuming that all the links are up.
 
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