Whats the purpose of a server NIC over a desktop NIC, PCI-X really make a difference?

D

dabomb

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Intel PRO 1000 GT Desktop Adapter Low-Profile
http://www.govconnection.com/web/Sh...hLogID={5F7FE332-455D-48A7-935D-D7BD25E2DA68}
versus
Pro/1000 MT Server Adapter
http://www.govconnection.com/web/Sh...hLogID={5F7FE332-455D-48A7-935D-D7BD25E2DA68}


Say a server has one network card it, what would be the advantage of using a card that costs 5 times the price. Does PCI-X really make a difference in performance? Or do server level cards have a better processor chip/packet handling/whatever on them?

Intel states they use the same driver for all cards, so its not at the driver level.
 
PCI-X will allow full bandwidth, since standard 32bit, 33MHz PCI has a max speed of 133MB/s, and that's shared between everything on the bus. Gibabit Ethernet has a theoritical top speed of 120MB/s in each direction, so it's possible to have the bus as the bottleneck.

As far as processing, I'm guessing the server card can offload the cpu a bit more. When I got cards for our servers, I actually bought some d-link server cards instead of the Intel cards because of the price difference. I did get several of the desktop versions of the Intel cards though, and everything has worked great for me.
 
What you are more liable to run into is a maximum number of supported simultaneous connections to a non server class adapter.

also the fact of scaleability seems to be easier to do with the server adapter.


Even if you are not pushing 1 gb of data per second with an adapter multiple simultaneous connections can bog down a normal adapter. The PCI X adapters if you have a PCI X slot.. not PCI E are much faster. On some systems (I speak of RS/6000 type servers here.) each PCI slot is it's own bus. This allows for much greater thuroughput.

Take a look at some testing on true bandwidth ability.

In a true multi user environment where this adapter will be in a server for stability and performance I would go with a server class PCI-X Adapter. They are more capeable hardware.

In a user system you can get by with the lower end basically because of a lack of true throughput needed. You are only going to be feeding x number of connections on average. Where on a server you can be feeding thousands of connections.
 
Party2go9820 said:
About $106.50

Click to expand...

lol :p

If I'm not mistaken don't parts designed for servers have a larger mean time to failure than standard parts?
 
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