Intell NIC's are they worth updating to?

[Lola]

Several time I have seen references to how great Intel NIC's are, and was wondering if it would be beneficial to upgrade a Asus AC1900P (Best Buy) with a dual NIC Intel board, and if so, why do you guys use 2 NIC boards instead of just one?

I haven't purchased the Asus router yet, this is just a wondering question.

 

[microchip]

Intel NICs, along with Broadcom ones, are the better ones WHEN you compare them to Realtek ones. The latter usually offer the bare minimum and don't focus on performance. They're also very cheap, hence why most motherboards come with Realtek NICs. The reason is that Intel/Broadcom NICs have hardware offloading for the more common stuff, while Realtek ones don't. In the end, don't expect to find a HUGE performance boost by going to Intel NICs. I'd say, Intel/Broadcom NICs are at most 5-10% better compared to Realtek ones.

 

[sfx2000]

Intel NIC's are fairly popular inside the FOSS community (Linux/BSD) due to mature and solid driver support... Broadcom is good across all platforms.

I don't really have any problems with Realtek on Windows, they work well enough..

Marvell is also pretty decent.

 

[TonyH]

Several time I have seen references to how great Intel NIC's are, and was wondering if it would be beneficial to upgrade a Asus AC1900P (Best Buy) with a dual NIC Intel board, and if so, why do you guys use 2 NIC boards instead of just one?

I haven't purchased the Asus router yet, this is just a wondering question.

Referring NIC as WiFi card? My understanding is NIC means Ethernet controller card. I could be wrong.
Intel product always has good support. Few laptops in my house all have Intel 7260AC cards. Asus, MSI, Dell, Alienware all came with a stock low end cards. I replaced them all with Intel cards.

 

[Lola]

Thanks to all for the responses Now I know what to expect. I never knew there was a difference since all the MB's I've used came with Realtek NIC's.
I don't run Windows, did once, never again. I am solid in the Linux camp forever. So I'll find a price on Broadcom and Intel NIC cards for the computer. NIC = Network Interface Card.

 

[sfx2000]

Thanks to all for the responses Now I know what to expect. I never knew there was a difference since all the MB's I've used came with Realtek NIC's.
I don't run Windows, did once, never again. I am solid in the Linux camp forever. So I'll find a price on Broadcom and Intel NIC cards for the computer. NIC = Network Interface Card.

If your onboard NIC is working - don't start creating problems

For linux client usage - Realtek gigabit ethernet NIC's are perfectly usable... and even for light duty server stuff (e.g. just on the LAN) - the Broadcom's, need to be careful, as there are a few that use Broadcom's closed source driver, and a few that use their open-source driver, and I've had issues with the open-source driver under RHEL7 with it falling apart under load (unfortunately, the box has 4 of them on the main board - ended up disabling three, leaving one for the ILO/Management interface, and dropping in an Intel Pro/1000 4 port card, which I wasn't very happy about, not for cost reasons, but for performance reasons... (those four ports had to share 1x PCI-e lane, that's all that was available on that box, whereas the 4 broadcom's each had dedicated lanes - and got stuck into a blame someone else loop between the application server provider, HP, and RedHat - no one wanted to take ownership - it'll be a while before I consider Broadcom again in high usage environments)

 

[microchip]

Thanks to all for the responses Now I know what to expect. I never knew there was a difference since all the MB's I've used came with Realtek NIC's.
I don't run Windows, did once, never again. I am solid in the Linux camp forever. So I'll find a price on Broadcom and Intel NIC cards for the computer. NIC = Network Interface Card.

I'm on Linux myself (16 years so far) and while I agree Intel/Broadcom NICs are better, I've never had any complaints about Realtek NICs. And in real world usage, you'd be pressed to find much difference between those and Intel/Broadcom ones.

 

[Lola]

If your onboard NIC is working - don't start creating problems

For linux client usage - Realtek gigabit ethernet NIC's are perfectly usable... and even for light duty server stuff (e.g. just on the LAN) - the Broadcom's, need to be careful, as there are a few that use Broadcom's closed source driver, and a few that use their open-source driver, and I've had issues with the open-source driver under RHEL7 with it falling apart under load (unfortunately, the box has 4 of them on the main board - ended up disabling three, leaving one for the ILO/Management interface, and dropping in an Intel Pro/1000 4 port card, which I wasn't very happy about, not for cost reasons, but for performance reasons... (those four ports had to share 1x PCI-e lane, that's all that was available on that box, whereas the 4 broadcom's each had dedicated lanes - and got stuck into a blame someone else loop between the application server provider, HP, and RedHat - no one wanted to take ownership - it'll be a while before I consider Broadcom again in high usage environments)

After I had left hear, I went over to Amazon and the Broadcom NIC had some really Up and down reviews. The Intel seemed to be loved by everyone except for one that was DOA, but that happens sometimes with any electronic equipment.
I just don't know how much faith to put in the reviews at Amazon. I'm sure some people are honest just as some people are crooked as a snake, you basically just take a chance. However with that said I'm more inclined to believe what some of the guys here at SNB have to say.

 

[Shonk]

When a capacitor recently went for a nic on a motherboard with duel realtek nic's
i disabled them and replaced with an intel i350-T2 pci-e 2.0 x4 card (its in a 2.0 8x slot so getting its full bandwidth)

With smb multipath the realtek's used to get 227 megabytes over the lan from dual broadcom 5720's on the other device

anyway the i350-T2 gets 210-215 megabytes or so

so i wouldnt say they are faster then realteks

a single card gets the full 113 megabytes
the same silicon is operating both nic's
at a guess i would say it isnt quit upto full switching capacity of both ports at the same time

its a genuine intel built card

 

[Lola]

Thanks to all. I think I'll just leave well enough alone and stick with what's in there now.