Real (measurable) benefits of using 2 onboard NIC's ???

A

Angus66

Limp Gawd
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Jun 22, 2008
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I just purchased a new P55 motherboard and it features (2) Gigabit LAN ports.
I see this feature on many mid/upper range motherboards, but I'm not familiar with what situations would warrant using both ports (or even the vaguest idea of how to utilize both at the same time).

I do play a lot of online FPS games (and would like to do more), but other than that I'm just usually just surfing PC tech sites or downloading stuff. I'm on cable for net access but I'll have to check to see what kind of up/down speeds I'm getting.

Is it even worth the trouble for a user like me?

Any thoughts, suggestions or tech advice would be appreciated. :cool:
 
Nope, not really.

It will make NO difference for internet use, your internet will not come close to maxing a single NIC.
 
That's kind what I thought.

Guess I'll just disable the 2nd NIC.

Thanks for the reply! :cool:
 
Yeah, I really don't get why so many consumer desktop boards ship with dual NICs. I can't see a single use-case for this in a home setting. Personally I'd much rather they spend the extra couple dollars on using a single *good* NIC (ie. Intel) rather than two crappy ones. But of course that's unheard of outside true server/workstation boards.
 
my mb has three!!! 2 wired nics and one wireless. two are disabled in bios.
 
keenan said:
Yeah, I really don't get why so many consumer desktop boards ship with dual NICs. I can't see a single use-case for this in a home setting. Personally I'd much rather they spend the extra couple dollars on using a single *good* NIC (ie. Intel) rather than two crappy ones. But of course that's unheard of outside true server/workstation boards.
Click to expand...

I would agree that there are many consumer boards out there that I would prefer had a single intel nic instead of 2 Reaktek ones. In fact I'm trying to think of any boards that aren't server class that have come out in the last year that aren't reaktek, except maybe 1 or 2 asus boards that are using marvel.
 
I use both of my NICs fairly often. If I'm setting up SOHO router for a client or some such thing that requires a web interface to be configured, it is infinitely useful to have two ports.
 
kevinzak said:
I use both of my NICs fairly often. If I'm setting up SOHO router for a client or some such thing that requires a web interface to be configured, it is infinitely useful to have two ports.
Click to expand...

Wow I never thought of using a 2nd NIC to do that.
Thanks for the tip.
 
kevinzak said:
I use both of my NICs fairly often. If I'm setting up SOHO router for a client or some such thing that requires a web interface to be configured, it is infinitely useful to have two ports.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm, that would make it easier to do all my DD-WRT reflashing where it seems like you're changing the settings at every step.

I actually just re-enabled my second NIC to set up a route to my FreeNAS. Not so much for any real improvement (a single 1Gb link should be more than fine for my 400Mb to the FreeNAS and 6Mb DSL), but just as a way to play with something that I don't have a whole lot of experience with.
 
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