Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Network Adapter Card - $25

Been waiting on this NIC to go on sale again. Got the email and jumped on it before seeing this thread. My ASUS Gene-Z been dropping connection on a regular basis. Tried everything to get the O/B Intel Nic to play nice, nope. Hopefully this takes care of it. BTW...I hate the Egg Saver free shipping....paid the $4 for 3day UPS. :)
 
Great NIC. I run 3 in my house and have one stored as a backup already or I'd buy another one with that deal.
 
Do any consumer motherboards ship with a comparable integrated NIC?
 
rudy said:
Do any consumer motherboards ship with a comparable integrated NIC?
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To the best of my knowledge most consumer grade motherboards use integrated lan that utilizes the CPU. I've never owned otherwise. I'm sure it exists somewhere, it just isn't common. I didn't notice any difference in gaming versus integrated, but with large network transfers and streaming extreme-HD it makes a huge difference.
 
requiem99 said:
To the best of my knowledge most consumer grade motherboards use integrated lan that utilizes the CPU. I've never owned otherwise. I'm sure it exists somewhere, it just isn't common. I didn't notice any difference in gaming versus integrated, but with large network transfers and streaming extreme-HD it makes a huge difference.
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But you have to have them on both sides, correct? So if the destination system is wireless, and the source has this guy wired, you're pretty much wasting your money?
 
The reviewers on Newegg are funny. Some were bitching there are no drivers for this card on Intel's site and I was on the download page inside of 5 seconds.
 
rudy said:
Do any consumer motherboards ship with a comparable integrated NIC?
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There ARE boards from asus, msi and gigabyte that ship with a intagrated intel nic.
The X79 board in my sig shipped with a really nice one. You simply have to read the product description of the "NIC" in the specs on the boards you're interested in.

Many boards still do ship with a crappy realtec nic... Again, just keep your eye out on the specs to be sure you're getting a intel nic.


requiem99 said:
To the best of my knowledge most consumer grade motherboards use integrated lan that utilizes the CPU. I've never owned otherwise. I'm sure it exists somewhere, it just isn't common. I didn't notice any difference in gaming versus integrated, but with large network transfers and streaming extreme-HD it makes a huge difference.
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I thought that integrated intel nics were much less cpu hungry then the realtec nics :confused:
 
Modred189 said:
But you have to have them on both sides, correct? So if the destination system is wireless, and the source has this guy wired, you're pretty much wasting your money?
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What are you talking about? Of course you have to match up your connection speeds if you want faster transfers. If your router is 1gbps and your wireless is 54mbps you aren't going to see improvement changing network cards on the wired side if you were previously maxing out your connection to your wireless box. I'd expect someone with the title "I'm smarter than you" to know something so obvious. :eek:

Or did I misunderstand your question?
 
requiem99 said:
What are you talking about? Of course you have to match up your connection speeds if you want faster transfers. If your router is 1gbps and your wireless is 54mbps you aren't going to see improvement changing network cards on the wired side if you were previously maxing out your connection to your wireless box. I'd expect someone with the title "I'm smarter than you" to know something so obvious. :eek:

Or did I misunderstand your question?
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No, I was being a bit oblique, i think, posting from my phone on the train, while this dumb *&^*^&% was yammering away on her BLACKBERRY. ANyway...

My point was, while I realize I'll never get more capability than the slowest component has, few NICs (wired or wireless) can really saturate the pipe they are attached to. That said, if I have three devices:

PC1-(wire)- N router - - (wireless N Signal)- - PC2

If I were to replace the gigabit, onboard wired NIC in the PC1, what is the likelihood I would see any real improvement? i.e., the bottlenecks are likely found on the wireless connection, correct?

(And I freely admit, networking is NOT my thing, lol)
 
Modred189 said:
No, I was being a bit oblique, i think, posting from my phone on the train, while this dumb *&^*^&% was yammering away on her BLACKBERRY. ANyway...

My point was, while I realize I'll never get more capability than the slowest component has, few NICs (wired or wireless) can really saturate the pipe they are attached to. That said, if I have three devices:

PC1-(wire)- N router - - (wireless N Signal)- - PC2

If I were to replace the gigabit, onboard wired NIC in the PC1, what is the likelihood I would see any real improvement? i.e., the bottlenecks are likely found on the wireless connection, correct?

(And I freely admit, networking is NOT my thing, lol)
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The wireless link is only going to go as fast as IT will go. Improving that link will be the only thing to improve transfers to PC2, since it is the bottleneck by far. If it improved at all it would be very small and negligible IMO.
 
prime2515102 said:
The reviewers on Newegg are funny. Some were bitching there are no drivers for this card on Intel's site and I was on the download page inside of 5 seconds.
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I thought the complaint was valid.

From a Newegg review:

No driver disk for a network card! if i can"t get on the net how do you get the driver! sandbagged by intel again!!!!
Click to expand...


For MSRP of $50 I would think a driver disk would be included. Lame.
 
Modred189 said:
No, I was being a bit oblique, i think, posting from my phone on the train, while this dumb *&^*^&% was yammering away on her BLACKBERRY. ANyway...

My point was, while I realize I'll never get more capability than the slowest component has, few NICs (wired or wireless) can really saturate the pipe they are attached to. That said, if I have three devices:

PC1-(wire)- N router - - (wireless N Signal)- - PC2

If I were to replace the gigabit, onboard wired NIC in the PC1, what is the likelihood I would see any real improvement? i.e., the bottlenecks are likely found on the wireless connection, correct?

(And I freely admit, networking is NOT my thing, lol)
Click to expand...

No improvement in this situation for PC1-PC2 transfers because you are hugely bottlenecked by PC2 wireless. A miniscule improvement for wired PC1 overall because you would be offloading the networking onboard load onto a dedicated network card so you might see marginal increases in pc performance and/or network latency maybe but most would likely be within the margin for error.

edit: and a driver disc? Who cares. Get the driver from Intel. Of course you can. Newegg reviewers can be so stupid.
 
SonDa5 said:
I thought the complaint was valid.

From a Newegg review:


Quote:
No driver disk for a network card! if i can"t get on the net how do you get the driver! sandbagged by intel again!!!!



For MSRP of $50 I would think a driver disk would be included. Lame.
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How did that Newegg reviewer get to the internet and to Newegg to order the NIC in the first place?
Also, many popular network cards I have seen don't even need a driver. Did that guy even try to use the card, or did he just immediately go to his primary computer/phone to log into newegg and leave a whiny review?
 
SonDa5 said:
I thought the complaint was valid.

From a Newegg review:




For MSRP of $50 I would think a driver disk would be included. Lame.
Click to expand...

Actually there was another guy saying they weren't on Intel's site either. But as far as that goes, it is bulk, so no disk is usually assumed.
 
Prav said:
I added a silly VGA ram heatsink to mine for looks mainly. Great product.
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Overclock that bitch.

9DUml.jpg


A whip'cracka!
 
That idiot complaining about a driver disc must be running Windows 95-XP. Windows Vista/7/8 automatically knew what it was and installed it.
 
Modred189 said:
It was linux actually, I believe...
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Even more retarded because the EXPI9301CT uses the 82574L controller which is supported by the e1000e driver in the kernel of any modern distro and prior to that was supported by the e1000 driver since the controller's release in 2008.
 
Got mine today and I popped it in my S1155 MB with W7 64bit and the drivers loaded immediately when I booted up and was able to connect to the internet.

I then went to Intel WEB site and downloaded most updated drivers. Working well.
 
I installed this NIC in my ASRock P67 mobo, and it worked great, but my computer would keep coming out of sleep on its own. I disabled the onboard LAN through BIOS, downloaded the newest drivers from Intel, tweaked things in BIOS and changed them back, I couldn't get it to stay in sleep with this NIC installed. I removed it today, and now it sleeps no problem. Too bad.

I also installed one in a server at a local not-for-profit, and it dramatically increased the speed of large file transfers. Backing up the server locally takes a 1/3 of the time. Nice.
 
Got mine in....instantly recognized and installed. (uses the same driver as my O/B Intel NIC) Works as expected. No drops, great speed. The O/B has been flaky and kicked around the idea of a RMA, but don't want the hassle ATM.
 
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