Dedicated Ethernet cards

[Joseph F]

Why do some people still recommend these over integrated Ethernet adapters?
I've never had an issue with all the integrated adapters I've used, unless they were completely broken, which is a rare occurrence for me.

 

[450]

Intel dedicated NICs are usually better than the integrated stuff which is usually Broadcom or Realtek. Better speeds, higher reliability.

 

[OFaceSIG]

For gaming the diffierence will never be night and day. You will get slightly better throughput and latency but it's not a game changer. I usually only use add-on NICs when the PC is real old and the onboard has failed or if the onboard is 100 and I need gig. That's about it.

 

[Deleted member 88227]

What 450 said and also what OFaceSIG said. Not really beneficial on a gaming rig, but something like a high volume file server on a Gigabit network will benefit from a better NIC.

 

[PersonalJ]

They're generally for servers.