Realtek RTL8111H

Gimpymoo · 15 Dec 2016 at 20:14

Should it dictate my choice of motherboard in favour of Intel?

Running 1GB LAN with moderate traffic.

Thanks.

Rainmaker · 15 Dec 2016 at 23:13

For throwing around a few movie files and streaming the odd YouTube video? Probably not. But in general terms Intel NICs are by far superior, especially dedicated cards with proper offloading etc. I'd always favour Intel onboard over Realtek, but in practice I just grab an Intel PCIe server card (e.g. Pro 1000 MT) from eBay and use that anyway. It's also a factor if you use BSD, Linux or other OS beyond Windows. The drivers for proper Intel NICs are far superior and better supported for heavy workloads under BSD (pfSense etc) or Linux (IPFire, desktop systems etc) than Realtek et al. As a consequence you'll get more consistent - and higher - throughput from Intel than you will anything else.

Gimpymoo · 16 Dec 2016 at 00:38

Thanks for the reply.

With the Dual PRO 1000 MT in Windows, can you team the connections for double bandwidth?

Rainmaker · 16 Dec 2016 at 00:41

Gimpymoo said:
Thanks for the reply.

With the Dual PRO 1000 MT in Windows, can you team the connections for double bandwidth?

Never done it personally but I believe the answer is yes. Be aware that the older Intel NICs don't have driver support under Windows 10, so you'll only have standard OOTB integrated drivers. Works great for us (200/20 Mbps) though.

bledd · 16 Dec 2016 at 11:30

1000 mt doesn't have w10 drivers for advanced feature set.

W10 is totally broken for teaming at the moment. They broke it over a year ago and still haven't fixed it :/

You only need teaming if you have very specific requirements.