Is A NIC a NIC Or Are Some Better Than Others?

[Seventh Monkey]

I'm looking at PCIe x4 Dual 1G NICS for use in a Windows 10 based NVR. The NVR will be dual homed to two networks and traffic speeds should not exceed 500 MBPS on either, so 1 G should be adequate.

Looking at NIC choices the price range is all over the map from less than $30 to more than $300. Is there a real difference in the performance between the low and high end that makes the extra cost worth it? For example the $36 Intel E1G42ET vs the $123 StarTech ST2000SPEXI using the Intel i350 chip set?

 

[thiggins]

For 1 GbE NICs, I'd say you're unlikely to find significant difference in performance. You might have more driver settings to mess with, but don't know how that would help you.

 

[Seventh Monkey]

For 1 GbE NICs, I'd say you're unlikely to find significant difference in performance. You might have more driver settings to mess with, but don't know how that would help you.

That's kind of what I was thinking, but wasn't sure why the high end NICs were out there if they were the same performance wise. If I was teaming them I could see needing a specific chip set.

The computer I'm using is a small form factor so I can stick it in a 2U shelf and only has two expansion slots, and x4 and an x16. I had thoughts of using a dual SFP+ NIC in the x16 slot, but did the calculations and really don't need that much capacity for the $$$, My switches support 1G Ethernet, SFP and SFP+ so I have a lot of flexibility.

 

[thiggins]

If I was teaming them I could see needing a specific chip set.

You're correct. Some NICs switches could have trouble with aggregation. I can't speak to anything in particular, since I don't use aggregation.

 

[RMerlin]

When it comes to Windows, it makes about no difference. If looking at the Linux/BSD world, or virtualization (Xen/Vmware/etc...), then Intel is generally acknowledged as the best option, as their *IX drivers are very mature, and do offer a few features that others like Realtek might not offer. For instance, I don't know if this has changed, but it used to be required to go with Intel if you wanted to run pfsense and fully use its QOS implementation, as the Realtek driver was missing certain features there. Xen's list of certified NICs is also more limited when looking at non-Intel NICs.