PCI NIC over onboard?

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Ok, I am looking to upgrade my network and DSL connections, as the telco refuses to do anything, not like I trust them anymore after the last go around. I think of my self as average with PC's, but am clueless with this sort of thing. Is something like the cheap Intel PWLA8391GT any better than the onboard on say a P5Q-Pro?

I am also looking for a DSL splitter, I found this one on ebay, but don't know if it's any good, all I have out side is a small NID box, so no room for one inside the box. Wile the max I can get out where I live is 3.5mb I only get about 1.4mb, I am guessing this could be due to the what looks like 30 year old lines, so I will be running some new cat 6 for the box.

Thanks for the input.
 
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Better at what? Using which measure? At 4 Mb/s DSL Internet downloads? No. A material difference in gigabit LAN transfers? No, the on-board is more likely to be superior.

If someone has a concrete measure showing better performance, and not just fanboyism, they should step up and provide a demonstration.
 
Madwand said:
Better at what? Using which measure? At 4 Mb/s DSL Internet downloads? No. A material difference in gigabit LAN transfers? No, the on-board is more likely to be superior.

If someone has a concrete measure showing better performance, and not just fanboyism, they should step up and provide a demonstration.
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You don't work with IT eh?
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3142&p=11

The net is full of the same findings...
 
The dedicated Intel card is going to be better, but your only going to really see the difference in synthetic benchmarks, in real-use you're not likely to notice any difference. I would keep using the onboard if I were you.
 
Fark_Maniac said:
Atech, let's take a step back here.

The man is looking for an up to 3.5Mbit/s solution here. You link to a 900Mbit/s comparison.




Your onboard will do just fine until you get gigabit connections straight into your house.
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Or just run run a simple LAN...this is 2009, not 1979.
 
Fark_Maniac said:
Your onboard will do just fine until you get gigabit connections straight into your house.
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Sorry, but I found this REALLY funny. By the time I get anything close to that here I will be long dead, I fought tooth and nail for the 3.5mb. However this will be used with a home network as well which everything in the network will handle gigabit speeds. I have also had some trouble with the stability of my connection and was thinking that maybe a better ad in card might stop that (didn't have the problem with the older board).

I mean it's only $20 something bucks, I may not be able to make use of it yet, but I believe everyone who replied agrees it's better, so I will just go ahead and get it.

Anyone have any input on the splitter? Any good?
 
The splitter you linked to is for spiting the phone line before it gets to the modem and is NOT used to split the internet connection between computers. The one you listed is only used to eliminate the need to have a DSL filter at every phone connection used in your house. If you want to split the DSL internet you will need a network switch.

Also in my experience the difference in speed you are getting has more to due with the distance you are from the DSL equipment in your area, the amount of traffic in your area, or a line outside your house that you have no control over. More power to you if you want to rerun your telephone lines with Cat6 but don't be surprised if your connection speed isn't any faster. They type of cable you run to a DSL modem has nothing to do with the speed of your internet. Nobody gets the speed they are paying for from their provider. Some get more some/most get less...
 
Madwand said:
Better at what? Using which measure? At 4 Mb/s DSL Internet downloads? No. A material difference in gigabit LAN transfers? No, the on-board is more likely to be superior.

If someone has a concrete measure showing better performance, and not just fanboyism, they should step up and provide a demonstration.
Click to expand...

LMAO at this post.

I suspect you don't work in IT at all, if you do, I really feel for the company you work at.
 
Atech said:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3142&p=11

The net is full of the same findings...
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What did you intend that link to show? From what I see it makes a pretty good counter-argument for the point that most of the NICs performed about the same, and the differences were not really relevant. Here's the closing quote from the article:

Anandtech said:
However, the differences are slight and generally not noticeable under normal operating circumstances.
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Besides, that article includes neither of the OP's candidate NICs, and there is a good argument by conjecture that based on the article and interface, that the OP's Intel NIC will be slower than the on-board in synthetic tests.

However, the point about being generally not noticeable under normal operating circumstances stands, and the people here are apparently more interested in personal / profession attacks than substantive discussion, so bye.
 
However, the point about being generally not noticeable under normal operating circumstances stands
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Agreed. How you use it will matter.

Also:
By the time I get anything close to that here I will be long dead
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So primarily, internal usage will show the difference. Are you setting up a file/media server or anything? If your streaming music or video around the house or something, spend the $20.......hey it's only $20 we're talking about anyway.
 
dr.sandman said:
The splitter you linked to is for spiting the phone line before it gets to the modem and is NOT used to split the internet connection between computers. The one you listed is only used to eliminate the need to have a DSL filter at every phone connection used in your house. If you want to split the DSL internet you will need a network switch.

Also in my experience the difference in speed you are getting has more to due with the distance you are from the DSL equipment in your area, the amount of traffic in your area, or a line outside your house that you have no control over. More power to you if you want to rerun your telephone lines with Cat6 but don't be surprised if your connection speed isn't any faster. They type of cable you run to a DSL modem has nothing to do with the speed of your internet. Nobody gets the speed they are paying for from their provider. Some get more some/most get less...
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That I know, I do not like having filters everywhere, also, I have run a line through my house to the outside NID box and I do indeed get 3mb+ to the box, however once inside it all goes to hell. I do not feel like trouble shooting it, but I feel it is the really old wiring, so I think that having a dedicated line should eliminate most of the problems, and help any from arising in the future.

Monkey34 said:
So primarily, internal usage will show the difference. Are you setting up a file/media server or anything? If your streaming music or video around the house or something, spend the $20.......hey it's only $20 we're talking about anyway.
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Yes, I will have it linked with my HTPC a 2nd PC and a remote laptop station around the house, I will be getting the card for all the desktops. I thought since I am doing all this rewiring etc, I might as well get rid of all the bottle necks, DSL, network or other wise.

Thanks to everyone for the input.
 
Despite whatever benchmark test anyone links, there is a significant quality difference between major NIC brands and models, even at low speeds. If you are doing WAN transfers, especially over a high-latency or problematic Internet connection, the better NIC will have a "faster" connection. There will be the potential for less drops and retransmissions, even at lowly broadband speeds. This is especially important (err...noticeable) on UDP streaming applications like video or VoIP.

For a non-Internet example, I have the HDHomeRun device at home on a very clean 100/1000Mb network with a Cisco 3560G switch. It's a network enabled HDTV tuner which does UDP streaming of the HD channel to the end application. In this example, VideoLAN (VLC). I had constant pixelization problems and drops on my LAN with an onboard NVidia Gigabit controller. It didn't matter if I negotiated at FastE or GigE with my switch. I put in an Intel PCI NIC, and the problem was solved.

The only onboard NIC's I find acceptable are Intel and Marvell. Realtek...maybe...for a friend's build. Broadcom and NVidia are crap- and for more reasons than listed here.

Once again, it is irrelevant whether your connection is 100, 1000 or only 3.5Mb.
 
Ockie said:
LMAO at this post.

I suspect you don't work in IT at all, if you do, I really feel for the company you work at.
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You should feel sorry for the one I work at. My boss knows gigabit would improve our LAN but wont buy the damn switch (a dell 48-port gigabit web managed switch for $600 is all we need). Oh well... I got him to let us enter the Napera Beta so that at least my desk and connection the servers is gigabit. (I work at a computer repair shop and my desk also has a bench for the pcs I work on.)

I guess since I'm the only guy who wants to go into a real IT job (besides one other co-worker) and since I'm the de-facto admin its expected eh?

to the OP: I'd get intel gigabit NICS for LAN performance not your WAN performance.. if you ever decide to stream HD while you are trying to do ANYTHING else on you're lan... its gonna suck if you dont have gigabit... and Intel NICS are the best in the buisness.
 
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