Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.crl.com!symiserver2.symantec.com!usenet From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: PCI cards supported by 2.1 release Date: 13 Jul 1996 08:37:36 GMT Organization: Symantec Corporation Lines: 23 Message-ID: <4s7n8g$kfv@symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <4ricnq$4c4@news.ci.ua.pt> <4s3q7s$cpf@simcity.LF.net> Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.6.34.1 X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2 In <4s3q7s$cpf@simcity.LF.net>, pi@complx.lf.net (Kurt Jaeger) writes: >In article <4ricnq$4c4@news.ci.ua.pt>, >Fernando Cozinheiro <Fernando.Cozinheiro@ci.ua.pt> wrote: >>I've several PCI systems running with normal ISA network cards. I think >>that I could get more performance if I could use PCI cards. But which >>are supported? > >Looks like the dec 21040 based simple cards work fine. Ah, but do you have hard figures showing a performance improvement with the PCI cards? I've had several small networks with all ISA cards, (modern cards, not older ones) and a packet sniffer on them, and I've had no trouble pushing the 10BaseT Ethernet well past 80% saturation according to the sniffer. This leads me to the conclusion that a 10baseT PCI network card is simply a way for network adapter card vendors to make money off of unsuspecting users. Now, a 100baseT PCI card I can understand, and certainly PCI is a better buss than ISA, but if it's raw network performance you want I'd vote for a plain old SMC/WD 8013 ISA card, available for pennies at a swap meet over a PCI card.