Fastest Gigabit Card?

[zamar29]

Is there a trustworthy comparison test or forum thread comparing measured speed output of various Gigabit Ethernet PCI-E cards on this forum or elsewhere? Can't find it on Google. What low cost Gigabit Ethernet PCI-E cards you guys can recommend to ensure real gigabit speeds on lan and Gigabit internet sub, and why? My current Broadcom based 2-port server class old Gigabit card is maxed out at 450 Mbps limit with all hardware offloads enabled, default Windows drivers, and optimized Win 10 Pro TCP stack using TCP Optimizer. This happens while PC CPU and RAM usage remains low.

 

[abailey]

That sounds weird to me. Even my 7 year old laptop with a Realtek adapter can pull over 900Mb/s. Maybe there is something going on between your Win10 and the Broadcom card. When I want a quality card I usually purchase Intel, but honestly almost any PCI-E ethernet card should be able to get Gigabit speeds, especially if you have plenty of computer processing power (as some cards have drivers that use more of the computer CPU). How are you testing the speed?

 

[zamar29]

I test speed using various methods, such as LAN Speed Test between 2 PCs on LAN (that test has server and client packages), by watching the file copy speed on LAN in Windows Explorer, by doing a speed test with my internet provider's Speed Test server. The max speed through this card is 450 Mbps on a Gigabit network, while my Mobo Ethernet chipset gives 550 Mbps, and my relative's MAC laptop gives 850 Mbps on the same LAN and WAN. Its not surprising Gig Ethernet cards have different throughput, just like Gigabit routers, from which only a few models can achieve 850-900 Mbps throughput LAN-to-WAN. I do tests with Traffic Meter and any A/V software off, so it seems to be the real limit of the card. Unless there are some other factors that also limit Gigabit chipset on the PC Mobo, since it also presumably should show Gigabit speeds on LAN when measured without caching to RAM and/or HDDs, between client and server on LAN both hooked to the same modem-router. How to identify such factors?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Back when gigabit Ethernet cards were a new technology I did some testing with server-grade cards between various IBM and Sun servers. The results were frankly disappointing. Even after "tweaking" the parameters they barely managed 500Mbps.

Fast forward to the present and as @abailey said, even with the cheap on-board gigabit Ethernet of my desktop connected to a 4 year HP microserver I can easily get over 800Mbps in either direction. And that's running over an un-optimised Samba share, being held back by the write speed of the disk drives.

 

[zamar29]

What do you guys suggest to find out what is slowing down the cards? You may be right, but I need a solution.

 

[System Error Message]

all gigabit ethernet cards can achieve said speeds as long as your CPU and link can keep up. For instance PCI doesnt even reach 1Gb/s so you want PCIe despite some claiming PCIe latency not being good.

Many factors affect speeds and cards can be different. Realtek with it's minimalistic approach gives lower latency but also relies more on CPU. Some like intel server cards have a dedicated chip to perform some of the networking tasks and you can get enthusiast cards that can do even more when it comes to features. Its important to tweak your network settings too to make use of the card.

cabling and interference is important.

as long as both ends are capable and everything in the middle are, you can achieve 99% of the speed, just make sure to tweak your cards and network correctly.

 

[thiggins]

Check the specs of the PCIe slot you're using.

My article you linked says LAN Speed Test is throughput challenged and won't show full Gigabit throughput. Maybe the later version does, but the one I tested didn't.

TCP/IP throughput should top out at around 940 Mbps due to protocol overhead.

I use a TP-LINK TG-3468 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet adapter (Realtek RTL8168B based) in the router testbed. I found it better than the Intel adapters I'd been using. I haven't touched any of the settings.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Likewise I haven't changed any of the settings for my adapters for many years. In the past I've spent hours tweaking settings but overall it just made things worse. Sure, if I applied certain settings to both the sending and receiving machines I could increase the synthetic throughput under specific circumstances, but in the real world it didn't help. Maybe I just got lucky.

 

[zamar29]

Check the specs of the PCIe slot you're using.

The 2-port card is hooked to PCI-e 8x Mobo port that should have sufficient bandwidth even for 10 G card. The card spec says its 2Gbps per port in duplex mode with BCM5715 chipsets. I suspect that Traffic Meter, Firewall, and similar programs install extra layer of drivers that slow down network speed even when such programs are switched off.

 

[System Error Message]

The 2-port card is hooked to PCI-e 8x Mobo port that should have sufficient bandwidth even for 10 G card. The card spec says its 2Gbps per port in duplex mode with BCM5715 chipsets. I suspect that Traffic Meter, Firewall, and similar programs install extra layer of drivers that slow down network speed even when such programs are switched off.

older cards run at PCIe 1.1 or 1.0. Unlike PCIe 2.0 and newer, it is not full duplex so each lane runs at 2Gb/s rather than the 4Gb/s total by PCIe 2.0. However PCIe doesnt work the way you expect. Lane count and version are considered seperately so the p

The problem you have can vary. Your motherboard may not be giving enough lanes (even if its a PCIe 1.1 only card in a PCIe 2.0 board, lane counts are fixed, so 2 GPUs at 2.0 sharing the same 16 lanes PCIe 3.0 will get 8 lanes each at PCI 2.0). Your network setup may not be good so you should tweak your settings files (even linux has its weaknesses for very high performance networks at 40+ Gb/s), your cable and switches for instance as well. Your CPU matters for transfers as ethernet doesnt have some of the advantages had by SFP.

 

[sfx2000]

1Gbe NIC's should all perform about the same in Windows - the 450Mb throughput - that sounds like the connection is half-duplex instead of full duplex - check the cable first...

 

[zamar29]

I was able to have one of adapters run at 670Mbps wired to modem eventually by various optimizations, but that seems to be the max for now. I guess some hidden CPU or Mobo structure cause the limitation. Possibly, some unidentified extra driver layers still exist from long time installed and forgotten software that was carry on through Windows upgrades. Was looking for some Windows Performance Analysis tools to identify the culprit, may be someone can suggest it?

 

[Bilby]

I had bad experience with Broadcom card. And I thought Intel cards are better. They are really cost-effective.

 

[VisionxOrb]

I get about 900mbps of actual smb file transfer speed across realtek adaptors.

 

[sfx2000]

I had bad experience with Broadcom card. And I thought Intel cards are better. They are really cost-effective.

Intel cards do generally work well - I do recall some issues related to certain NIC's from Intel on high end DIY gamer boxes where UEFI/BIOS CSM issues can come into play with drivers on Win7/Win10.

Generally though - most GIGe adapters perform about the same on Windows - Linux has interesting support for RealTek and Broadcom* - Intel generally is better supported there - and in the BSD's, Intel is kind of the gold-standard...

* Linux and Broadcom - depends on the NIC and Driver - the broadcom proprietary stuff is good - some NIC's however fall under the FOSS driver, and there it can be a challenge with some of their GBe nics...