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On-board Gigabit LAN - Are they really GB ?

I have never really used onboard LAN for servers, always insist on using PCI-X 64bit cards to ensure correct performance, now PCI-X is slowly going out of fashion, the next step is PCI-e, ones I use most are the Intel PRO/1000P pn PCI-e X1 slots, performance on these seems to be fine, but I am wondering the following :

Onboard LAN such as ones thats included on most motherboards (ie.Abit, Asus) , are they really Gigabit or just a name but run on PCI bus speed ?
Are the Dell/HP broadcom onboard LAN true GB ?
I have also tried 33bit PCI Gigabit cards (ie. Realtek 8169 chipsets), but due to the limitation of PCI bus, they are nowhere near the GB speed, how can the manufactures still markets them as Gigabit products ?

Thanks

gl0b4l

The only way to know this is run a benchmark test.

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Aaron Street

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DuffyS40

ASKER

Thanks Devil, thats what I thought, benchmark only goes someways to show the throughput of speed, but is only when speak to people with real experience that highlights the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I do tend to use Intel Server NIC, just at times, it would be good to try alternatives.

Aaron Street

I found this out when running my network monitering tool and trying to capture a 1gig link. with cheep cards it would run fine for a little bit but after an hour or so it would fall over and freazee. When i phone the company to talk the firs thing they asked was did i have a "proper" NIC. as soon as i said i had a £20 job they told explained that a cheap card will not work on sustained volumes of data. you need a card that has been made to deal with it..

But they still suggested taht in a client machine a £15 card was easly good enough. So although MB manafactures might be installing cheap Gig card. it has to be said taht for the vast majority of us they are easly good enough. and in fact for many server applications at work we use the built in NIC. unless we have a good reson to purchase a seprate card and we dont ahve any problems.. we generaly buy in dell poweredges

DuffyS40

ASKER

Yes, the ones we use are Intel PRO/100 or 1000P, all are Bus Mastering, so all workload are done mostly within the card itself, I guess the WKS LAN doesnt need to be in constant hammering for data, so a short burst of I/O and its done the job, while the server are constantly send/recv data, especially on a large installation with heavy data/exchange.

Thanks for your input.