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

I jumped to an Intel PCI-E NIC after my dual onboard Realtek NICs started giving me endless headaches (mainly dropping connections and requiring regular driver reinstalls). Best thing I ever did.
 
I have an Intel Pro 1000 MT not the GT. (pci) I think it is a server NIC. Opinions on it?
 
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I have one of these. Under heavy loads my onboard Marvell NICs (both of them) would fail, requiring a restart.

Buying this solved all my issues.
 
Now, how would this be better than other similar adapters from other brands that are much cheaper? :eek:
 
zyzeast said:
Now, how would this be better than other similar adapters from other brands that are much cheaper? :eek:
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It's the same as on board video versus dedicated or on board RAID versus dedicated. In all but the cheapest cards it'll almost always be better to have a dedicated card.

Further, just like video/RAID cards, you get what you pay for.

Most people probably wouldn't notice much of a difference unless you need network bandwidth for a media server or daily backups. I'll probably end up getting two of these for dual NIC for my linux file server soon.
 
How much difference do you guys think I would see using one of these over the onboard Realtek on an X58 or P67/Z68 board if I have a 3G connection through my router that currently gets me around 2.5Mbps down?
 
burningrave101 said:
How much difference do you guys think I would see using one of these over the onboard Realtek on an X58 or P67/Z68 board if I have a 3G connection through my router that currently gets me around 2.5Mbps down?
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No difference in your internet usage, in this scenario. Unless you have really bitchin' fiber you won't see any improvement in your internet over onboard, but you'll see a boost in LAN transfer rates provided you have the appropriate other hardware (fast drives, fast switch).
 
Damn back again.. Still so tempting.. I am afraid it would be a waste of 25 bucks now though since I am either going o add a 2nd video card in my 890gxm mATX board & wouldn't have room, or if I upgrade boards when BD comes out I am looking at the crossfire V which has onboard Intel Lan.
 
I made the jump to Intel NICs for my home system (server, htpc, desktop on a gigabit network) and easily saw a 50% improvement in transfer speeds. Onboard NICs would cap out around 40MB/s. I regularly see 70's when moving large files.
 
zyzeast said:
Now, how would this be better than other similar adapters from other brands that are much cheaper? :eek:
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Intel nics are the industry standard, it is what everything is tested on. They are rock solid and give the best performance.
 
Thanks OP. Ordered one for my exsi server since the Realtek 8111e is not supported and don't feel like adding realtek drivers on the installation media.
 
I am running the cheap, stock onboard Realtek PCI-E controlled and it sustains over 60MB/s easily, i have 2x Intel Pro's and cannot see any difference in real world performance other than slightly faster transfer times on huge files. four routine use, zero real real world difference exact OS installs don't automatically recognize the new realtek's without adding drivers to the install.
 
Valkhorn said:
It's the same as on board video versus dedicated or on board RAID versus dedicated. In all but the cheapest cards it'll almost always be better to have a dedicated card.
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No not really, situations are very different. In terms of onboard vs dedicated video, there can be massive power difference, massive differences in what they are capable of. In terms of NICs, it is much closer even when there is a difference and there can be no difference at all.

If you have an Intel motherboard, you have an Intel NIC on board. It uses the same chip as their dedicated NICs. There's no difference in performance in that case.

So while it can be an improvement over a non-Intel NIC, it isn't the massive thing that something like dedicated video is and if you already have an Intel NIC it is the same thing.
 
While I'm sure many people on here have home servers and what not, I still believe the vast majority of people on here, are here because of their gaming rigs. It would be nice if more companies used Intel onboard NICs, but it seems very few do.
 
That's because it would cost a few bucks extra per mobo, which cuts into margin.
 
Hm. So my mobo has a realtek card. Wondering if I should spend the money to get a nice dedicated one. Think it'll help my in-game ping any? lol.
 
Dallows said:
Hm. So my mobo has a realtek card. Wondering if I should spend the money to get a nice dedicated one. Think it'll help my in-game ping any? lol.
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probably not. although the KillerNIC allegedly will help your ping.
 
SCSI said:
Thanks OP. Ordered one for my exsi server since the Realtek 8111e is not supported and don't feel like adding realtek drivers on the installation media.
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I'm glad a lot of people were able to take advantage of it. :D

jebo_4jc said:
That's because it would cost a few bucks extra per mobo, which cuts into margin.
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Yea, not too many boards other than the "PRO" and "DELUXE" models. Even a lot of the cheaper Intel boards use a Realtek NIC, which makes no sense at all IMO. :confused:
 
jebo_4jc said:
probably not. although the KillerNIC allegedly will help your ping.
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The NIC that is the topic of this thread will help your network performance and ping just as much as "KillerNIC", which is a regular NIC made to look fancy and priced at a ridiculous premium on the concept that, if it costs a fortune, people will buy it because it must be the best there is.
 
requiem99 said:
The NIC that is the topic of this thread will help your network performance and ping just as much as "KillerNIC", which is a regular NIC made to look fancy and priced at a ridiculous premium on the concept that, if it costs a fortune, people will buy it because it must be the best there is.
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it sounds like you know more than me, but do you have any evidence to support that opinion?
 
jebo_4jc said:
it sounds like you know more than me, but do you have any evidence to support that opinion?
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Of course, but I'm not going to go through all the work just to prove it to you. You can believe what you want, or do your own research and figure it out. It is not a difficult prospect. Or, if you like, you can believe I've got no evidence and am totally full of shit. Makes no difference to me. :)

edit: and of course I am not saying killernic has nothing whatsoever unique to it, I'm merely generalizing about its actual real world price, marketing, and performance.

edit2: back on topic, I got my 2 cards over the weekend (delivered by USPS despite being a UPS consignment, which was a bit odd) and they're both great, no improvement in ping of course, but a huge improvement in my local network transfer rates especially to/from my media server (which already had an Intel 10/100/1000). I was using the IP35-PRO onboard Realtek until I bought these, which was adequate, but I've been doing a ton of media conversion and transfer lately and my throughput was too low considering the rest of my hardware is screamin'.
 
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The onboard NICs are generally okay if you don't do a lot of large data transfers between computers or large downloads.

I will vouch for these Intel NICs though, I've had problems streaming to my ps3 with the onboard gigabit, and as soon as I popped in one of these Intel NICs, all my st-stuttering problems went away.

In for 2 more. Thanks op. 1 spare and one for wife's comp.
 
These are great NICs, I have one in my gaming rig, one in my file server, and its PCI-based brother in my Orb streaming PC. Much better than the Realtek ones they replaced.
 
Paradoxex said:
I have heard mixed stories, to say the least, regarding the benefit of these over onboard LAN. What are these best for? Streaming video through a low-to-mid grade HTPC? Gaming PCs?

What is the actual benefit, or is it just in better drivers?
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The main problem is a ton of people use Samba for stream. And if you know media streaming you know Samba is awful for high Bitrate movies. UPnP/DNLA has no problems with any Network card or Wireless G with Strong signal. These Intel nics help for streaming over Samba.
 
Thing to keep in mind with these is that unlike pretty much all other intel nics, these are software based. People seeing huge differences, especially in transfer speeds were probably having driver issues or configuration problems.

I have many pcs at home and many servers (all of which running at least a single 120gb ssd for OS, and then the servers are running various forms of raid with dedicated hardware). And I stream to multiple ps3s and xbox360s. My entire network is gigabit, with cat6, gigabit switches and gigabit routers. I am constantly transferring huge amounts of data for encodes/transcodes, backups, etc.

Using the latest drivers for these intel nics, realtek nics and marvell (realtek and marvell onboard) and tweaking everything as close as possible to intels network tweak guide, speeds are the same across the board. Nor do I ever experience drop outs with the onboard nics, maybe I'm just lucky. The only difference I've ever noticed with these software intel nics over onboard realtek/marvell is latency is sometimes a little better internally across the lan.

At one point last year newegg was selling these for $20, so I bought enough to put one in every machine on my network. Thinking that having a full intel network would somehow make everything faster. When I didn't notice any changes in realworld or benchmarks I started testing onboard against these intel nics. And came to the conclusion that software nics are software nics regardless of who makes them. All things updated and all things configured the same gave me the same performance across the board, in all cases I can max out ssd/raid transfer speeds to and from any machine/server on my network regardless of the nic(s) in use.


And in terms of the KillerNIC, it's not the hardware that makes it terribly special, it's the software that works pretty much like QoS on a router/dlink game engine. By default it's setup to prioritize gaming packets over all others.
 
SCSI said:
Thanks OP. Ordered one for my exsi server since the Realtek 8111e is not supported and don't feel like adding realtek drivers on the installation media.
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Realtek 8111E is still seen on the newest main boards. I would think more support is available now.


The deal is dead but I was thinking about getting one of these but I don't think I need it. I never have problems with my Realtek 8111E with my router and other wireless devices work fine swapping my data needs. I can see how an Intel could be needed.


Also I don't think the Intel NIC would improve my ping over the REaltek 811E for gaming which would be my main reason to upgrade to a dedicated NIC. In a LAN setting I can see how the Intel NIC would benefit but I don't do LAN gaming.
 
SonDa5 said:
Realtek 8111E is still seen on the newest main boards. I would think more support is available now.


The deal is dead but I was thinking about getting one of these but I don't think I need it. I never have problems with my Realtek 8111E with my router and other wireless devices work fine swapping my data needs. I can see how an Intel could be needed.


Also I don't think the Intel NIC would improve my ping over the REaltek 811E for gaming which would be my main reason to upgrade to a dedicated NIC. In a LAN setting I can see how the Intel NIC would benefit but I don't do LAN gaming.
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Nice Necro..
 
LOL. I remember reading this thread....that was a long time ago! Nostalgia FTW...
 
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