PCI-Express 10/100/1000 Cards?

Warriorprophet

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 22, 2001
Messages
1,510
Are there any good PCI-Express Gbe cards?

I only see a Dlink and a Koutech PEN120, anyone using either?

Any links to reviews would be awesome too!
 
I've rolled out about a dozen Intel PRO/1000 PT cards at work, plus one of the dual-port Server NICs. I've got no complaints. They're much better than the PCI Linksys Gig-E adapters they replaced.
 
I believe all the referenced NICs other than the Intel use Marvell chipsets, and there are two relevant variants of the Marvell -- one which supports segmentation offloading, and one which doesn't. AFAIK, the Marvell PCIe chipset supports segmentation offloading, but the PCI doesn't, hence the Linksys (which is only PCI AFAIK) would perform worst because of this and the PCI bus.

I've used the SysKonnect / Marvell PCIe and PCI versions. The PCIe version performs very well in many cases, and the PCI version performs so-so in most cases.

Not to be taken as any sort of real-world test, but as one demonstration of the Marvell PCIe's capability.

F:\tools\bench>iperf\iperf -c 192.168.0.135 -l 256k -t 21 -i 3 -r
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.0.135, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[720] local 192.168.0.100 port 8622 connected with 192.168.0.135 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[720] 0.0- 3.0 sec 85.5 MBytes 239 Mbits/sec
[720] 3.0- 6.0 sec 354 MBytes 990 Mbits/sec
[720] 6.0- 9.0 sec 355 MBytes 991 Mbits/sec
[720] 9.0-12.0 sec 354 MBytes 990 Mbits/sec
[720] 12.0-15.0 sec 355 MBytes 991 Mbits/sec
[720] 15.0-18.0 sec 354 MBytes 990 Mbits/sec
[720] 18.0-21.0 sec 354 MBytes 989 Mbits/sec
[720] 0.0-21.0 sec 2.16 GBytes 882 Mbits/sec
[700] local 192.168.0.100 port 5001 connected with 192.168.0.135 port 1426
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[700] 0.0- 3.0 sec 355 MBytes 993 Mbits/sec
[700] 3.0- 6.0 sec 354 MBytes 988 Mbits/sec
[700] 6.0- 9.0 sec 354 MBytes 991 Mbits/sec
[700] 9.0-12.0 sec 354 MBytes 989 Mbits/sec
[700] 12.0-15.0 sec 354 MBytes 990 Mbits/sec
[700] 15.0-18.0 sec 354 MBytes 991 Mbits/sec
[700] 18.0-21.0 sec 354 MBytes 988 Mbits/sec
[700] 0.0-21.0 sec 2.42 GBytes 990 Mbits/sec

That said, I'd probably go for the Intel Pro/1000 PT, -- AFAIK it's not very expensive, driver support is very good, and the performance is probably good.
 
Back
Top