Need help finding a good gigabit ethernet card

[Razor512]

While this is not a common upgrade these days, I am currently looking for a good pci-e ethernet card that will offer better gigabit performance.

The current onboard realtek ethernet cards do not offer as good of a gigabit performance as I would like.

The main issue are the way it deals with a single connection not using jumbo frames.

With the default setting of having interrupt moderation enabled, single connection speeds top out at around 104 MB/s (around 840mbit/s)

And disabling interrupt moderation will increase that value to 116MB/s (around 930mbit/s) and pings will go down from around 0.09ms to around 0.086ms, which while better, is not full gigabit speeds. (though all of this is at the cost of around 5% extra CPU usage.

If the number of connections are increased, the overall throughput will increase to around 980-990Mbit/s

What I am hoping to find is an ethernet card that can offer closer, or ideally a full gigabit throughput on a single connection

It is difficult to find benchmarks for ethernet cards, as not many people seem to do them (and when you do find them they are usually results measured with a $150 ethernet card

Does anyone have a recommended ethernet card which was able to offer them a full gigabit of throughput (packet overhead included)? (that is not insanely expensive


Wish small net builder could do an ethernet card roundup as it seems that the advanced settings in the ethernet card's device manager entry can impact performance, along with different drivers (along with different models of gigabit ethernet adapters, eg my realtek ethernet card is faster tham my atheros ethernet card)

 

[thiggins]

Intel PRO 1000 CT
No card will provide a "full Gigabit" of throughput. There is ALWAYS overhead.

 

[Razor512]

For me, I was benchmarking with overhead included, but it seems that many different ethernet cards will differ in performance slightly.

I will see if I can get the card you recommended, (seems to cost around $27 )
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CY0P7G/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[coxhaus]

Buy Intel Ethernet cards they are the best. You can find them on eBay used and cheap.

 

[Jesse B]

Grab an Intel card off ebay. They won't do 1Gbit (nothing will due to TCP/IP overhead, as well as other factors), but they'll come damn close.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Not only card, quality of cable matters as well(how it is run, is there any kinks or sharp bend, connectors, things like that) Jumbo frame? Jumbo frame has to be implemented all around involved to get it's benefit. I always like Intel cards.

 

[SkOrPn]

I have been using the Intel EXPI9301CT for a year now with FANTASTIC results on my Media/File Server. I do not believe you can go wrong with it. Its only 29.99 at the egg.

 

[ddelorme]

Intel make good cards but you are at about the limit, it is not a perfect world. If you have a few clients conected it mite be worth going with bonded nics and a switch that supports it like Gs108t..
This is the solution i use for my Ubuntu Server/nas all my clients have single nics but the load on the server is spread between the cards.