On board gigabit NIC died, now what?
 

ok my Asus M3A Mobo NIC apparently took a shit.

getting by with a Wireless usb adapter.

however i want a wired connection

what should i look for in regards to PCI NIC cards?

i don't mind paying a little more for a good one, but obviously not looking foir a $300 "Killer" gaming NIC.

suggestions?

wireless AC?

first thought that came to mind is go for an Ethernet USB.

just get any gig nic card pci-e/pci. pretty cheap to get one and works great. I recommend intel brand. I have a new dlink pci gig nic card that i have laying around i can sell to you if you want.

If you do ethernet USB the network is limited to 100mbps if you need to transfer within the network it will suck, unless you go for the usb3.0 ethernet adaptors

Wireless AC will work only if you have AC router and all your wireless devices are on AC other wise its useless

It depends on what you try to do.

There are quite a few gbps NICs out there that are both good and cheap. (Intel EXPI9301CTBLK comes to mind)

If you are planning on moving to wireless setup, AC is a good choice. I have an Apple 802.11AC TC and it works great on my rMBP, my wife's MBA and my NAS. Transfer on LAN level is very good. I can get up to 70MB/s although it's not sustainable unless we are in the same room as the TC. But signal strength is great overall. I used to have an Airport Express as a Wi-Fi extender for 2nd floor. I got rid of that after upgrading to AC.

i guess wireless will never beat hardwired.

thanks for the suggestions guys

When you do buy one, get a PCI-E, not PCI. Unless you're on a 100 mbps network or something (or if it's just for internet)

PCI has a peak bandwidth of 133 megabytes/s. It's plenty fast enough for Gigabit.

You chose this to be your first post? :seriously:

Using peak theoretical numbers doesn't always apply to real world performance. PCI based ethernet usually caps out at about 500-700 Mb/s depending on the situation. PCI-E will use the full 1000 Mb/s (more like 950 or so)

Besides even going by peak theoretical limits as you did, 133 MB/s is not "plenty" of bandwidth for Gigabit ethernet (which is 128 MB/s peak). It's barely within the limits, which is why we see real world performance work out much lower.

Wireless AC is only useful if your router supports this..

Gigabit NIC PCI-e cards are $15-$35... Wouldnt look at anything more then that.. read up reviews of the NICs and choose one..

I think PCI or PCI-E doesn't really matter if you are not into very intensive stuff. You would hardly notice any difference in real world usage.

Nevertheless, assuming you are buying new, I don't think there are many PCI Gigabit NIC out there anymore. All good cheapo cards I can find are PCI-E based already.

Network Adapters ASUS, Intel, D-Link, TRENDnet, TP Link

4 of the top 10 selling ethernet adapters on NCIX are PCI, 1 is USB, and 1 isn't an ethernet adapter at all :confused:

I would say just get that TP-Link unless you're doing heavy networking. It uses a Realtek controller, which is pretty good for most people in home usage. If you do a lot of networking, get the Intel

I said "good cheapos"

If you consider Marvel and VIA gigabit cheap solutions good, I've got no comment.

Marvell isn't bad. I would just buy an Intel one myself.

Earlier gbit solutions from Marvell had some issue with packet dropping. Many users reported the problem... and instead of fixing it, Marvell went on a released new version. :fuckthatshit:

The sad thing is, new version didn't eliminate the problem... it was better, but still with quite a few problems. :D

I chose a PCI version over PCI-E, because the PCIE slot on my mobo is right over the video card fans :(

thanks for the help guys

Yeah that's probably more important than the increased bandwidth :)