Intel vs Realtek

[nasfan]

I've been hearing gushing glowing reviews on intel Nic. I've owned a few since mid 90's. Frankly, I don't see any speed differences or throughput differences between intel and realtek, non what so ever. No matter how many files I copy back and forth trying to choke out the nics they both perform identically. Yet I search google for 30 seconds I see pages upon pages of people trashing realtek and prasing intel nics. In fact, I don't have any speed or compatibility issues with any of these "off-brand" NICs such as Atheros, Marvell and Realtek.

Onboard Disk controllers on the otherhand I've noticed marked increases in performance going from silmagic/sis/nvidia/marvell/via/ati/amd to Intel specially with AHCI. IMO, there is non other than intel when it comes to onboard disk controller.

So the real question is should I keep the intel NIC in the nas? It seems to me just added hassle.

 

[jdabbs]

Many people espouse Intel because of the "Realtek factor," not performance. Realtek gets its reputation from the poor quality of its drivers and occasional quirkiness. If you have a configuration in which the Realtek NIC functions properly, might as well use it.

 

[tipstir]

Realtek drivers have be very good if you get it from them and not from online third party sources. That's the issue. I've told my contact at Realtek they need to fix that issue. Intel just way to big and expensive they spend to much money on commercials they need to take that money and reduce cost so the consumer can save money on their product. When last did you see a Realtek commercial?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Back in the dial up days, we had cheap modems which were called "winmodems"...a cheap PCI card, they were tolerable for surfing the web. But doing heavy downloading, or online gaming...they'd reveal performance issues.

Similar with NICs..cheaper ones utilize more drivers and CPU power, the card itself has less controller chips on it...cheaper to make. realtek, vias, ..and working up towards almost mid-range marvell.

Better NICs have more hardware controllers on them, they don't put a load on the CPU..they can drive themselves. Intel is tops, 3COM...disappearing, but years ago were very much loved.

For the average home user, they won't see a performance difference when surfing online and doing light to medium stuff. But with heavy users, lots of massive gigabit file transfers, and especially with servers that have to deal with many concurrent sessions and throughput, and linux based routers that perform UTM functions and QoS features...the Intels will stand high above the rest...you'll see a big difference and quickly realize that you get what you pay for.

 

[tipstir]

Brands vary but you can't say Intel is better than Realtek, Ralink, Atheros, Broadcom and etc. They all got to follow certain guideline to produce clones of the major brand. 3Com is now HP. Just to many different brands make up a wired NiC and wireless NIC today. Dial-up 2400, 9600, 1400, 56K are history except for those who need to send a FAX, block calls by IP then these chips are still around. To me Texas Instrument DSP was the bomb back in the good old days.