Decide for me my next upgrade

[Sydog]

The only flaws in my system now are my soundcard and networking card

what would youy guyz reccomend for my next upgrade

either:

1. Nic a) dlink
b) planet intel chipset
c) other

or 2. Soundcard a) Winfast whatever
b) hercules Fortissmo
c) sb live
d) other

[Viper_NZ]

1) Other - Netgear

2) Fortissmo 2
an Acoustic Edge

[KingJackal]

I'd go with the D-Link and the Hercules.

But then, I HAVE a D-Link NIC and a Gametheatre XP, so I would say that, wouldn't I? :o :D

[Humantuckshop]

I think this is something you have to decide for yourself, but I would think about which was annoying me more - the lack of top quality sound or Networking issues.

I am actually in the same boat as you - I need a good NIC and I am using onboard sound ATM.

For me my next upgrade will be either a Philips AE or a Intel NIC.
Although I need a better case aswell, Lian Li PC65........

[Sydog]

Looks like it's the Fortissmo II. I don't need 5:1 but 4:1 will be usefull

[Scorched]

Sydog - Your 3D mark link does not work...

[Binky Stunt Cat]

a 3com network card :D
and a SB Live! Digital (better sound, yet none of those problems with the audigy)
i dont know what the Herc sound cards are like...

[KingJackal]

Originally posted by Scorched
Sydog - Your 3D mark link does not work...

Yeah - Sydog, you just copied the URL out of your browser when looking at the project. Bad boy
*smack*
:p

You'll find in the project details, Madonions gives a 'compare URL'. You have to use that.

[DiscoStu]

That Fortissimo II is quite good for the price.

I'll get round to putting the review up soon enough :p

[Sydog]

Yeah, when I do a benchmark next I will put a working link

[Deviant]

What does a good NIC do that a cheap one doesn't. I'm not being smart, I'v always used a cheapo and it's been brilliant, so don't need to upgrade it. Am I missing something?

[Scorched]

No your not missing anything and it a good question really.
What you've got to remember is that a High end nic in one machine is not much good unless you have a high end Switch and High end Nic in the machine at the other end. Also there is not much point if you have older ATA33 or 66 drives as the nics can transfer data faster than the drives can write it.
For most people I would say upgrade switch and cableing before bothering with the Nics.
So as you stated your'e not seeing any issuse with a lower end card, therefore don't waste money on a high end one.

[Sydog]

The speed doesn't bother me, my realtek card transfers at 9mb/s alot of the time, although whenever I am transfering big files It slows my computer down to the point of restarting

[_N_]

I remember reading an article ages ago, and it was a comparison of heaps of different NIC's and one of the things was, how much CPU and system resources does it use up, and the cheap ones used up more than the more expensive ones,

As for sound, look at the features you need and then decide.

[Deviant]

Originally posted by Scorched
Also there is not much point if you have older ATA33 or 66 drives as the nics can transfer data faster than the drives can write it.


Just a quick correction, HDD in Bytes per second, NIC's in bits/s. So 100Mbps is theoretically 10 MBytes/s based on 1 start bit, 1 stop and no parity. Even an older UDMA33 Drive is faster than a 100Mbps NIC. At least that as far as I know. Its only the newer 1000BaseT or 1000BaseF (is F for Fibre Optic?) NIC's that are faster.

But my 100BaseT NIC vs a Dlink 100BaseT? What benifits? The DLink might have better filtering and work faster in 0.1% of senarios, but that only when you are reaching the limits like using 100 metre lengths of cable.

[Deviant]

Originally posted by _N_
I remember reading an article ages ago, and it was a comparison of heaps of different NIC's and one of the things was, how much CPU and system resources does it use up, and the cheap ones used up more than the more expensive ones,

As for sound, look at the features you need and then decide.

Good point N, but if they run on a pentium, then they can't be using up too much processing power. Like a hardware/software modem, but the processing power compared to todays CPU's is nothing. It's cheapo soundcards that can suck CPU power. SB's are heaps better in this respect to on board sound, or cheap Fortmedia type cards, athough not nearly as good as some others. Ive seen benchmarks where SB used abot 3-5% on a 1 GHz CPU, and another brand (can't remember what) used only about 1-2%.

[Ragnor]

Network:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cheapo network card's use the cpu rather then hardware on the network card to do many operations..

cheap network eg Realtek cards are very much like winmodems

I've had 3com, intel, digital and realtek nic's in systems in the past.. and the realteks suck. Most el cheapo brands Cnet, Dlink use the realtek chipset so they suck too...

Alot of people pimp (hey pimp isn't banned .. cool) the Netgear FA310 for good reason.

The FA310 is being replaced with the FA311.

So Netgear FA310 or FA311 I would recommend

Sound:
~~~~~~~~~
I currently have a sblive live 5.1 (that I got from humantuckshop) and a Philips Acoustic Edge.

The sblive's were kick'n when they came out but they are old skool now.. you can pick up one 2nd hand for less then $80

If you're going to buy new I'd definately reccomend an Acoustic Edge, if you do go for one then you'll want to know about here:
http://www.3dss.com/drivers/AcousticEdge/WDMbeta.html

[Deviant]

So how much processing power does a NIC use? Does it really matter with todays processors.

[Tiggerz]

The best way to look for good componants is to take a look at what the corporates put in their machines. ie. compaq, hp and the like.

The reason is that when a corp negotiates a hardware contract with a vendor, they also negotiate a support lifecycle which guarantees that drivers will be kept available for a certain period of time and will be updated fairly often.

Also, you tend to find that the quality of the product tends to be a little higher, since large corps that purchase 20 or 30k units of products are able to dictate failure rates and the like.

Finally vendors that have been selling to this market for a while tend to have gone through the learning curve regarding quality and supply so tend to have smaller reduced failure counts.

I have been working with 3com and creative for some time now. 3com have one of the highest quality rates in the industry. They also tend to follow the standards pretty closely.

Creative have their good times and their bad times. However, this is usually down to their programmers. Their bad times tend to come after they have had a high churn rate of developers. Creative went through the quality cycle mid 95 and have been improving since.

Dlink are not so hot. They have not had any major corporate contracts and as far as I am aware, have not been forced through the quality cycle. They still believe they can lead the market which means that their products tend to deviate from the norm feature and standards wise.

Intel are heavily focused on industry standards and also have a higher than normal quality base.

For a NIC I would suggest probably 3com followed by Intel. For a sound card, look at creative first.

[Tiggerz]

Oh by the way.

Intel have released the new gigabit cards. They are 10/100/1000 compatible.. You'll need a PCI-X slot in your server to handle the server card (PCI 66/133Mhz) but the desktop card will run in a normal PCI bus.

These cards are the fastet on the market by some 100% over the next fastest card- the server card will cruise at around 900 m/bits and the desktop cards at between 500 and 650 m/bits.

remember that for every gigabit of network traffic you need 1Ghz of processor speed just to handle the IP stack loading. Scale this up and down to find the real impact on the machine.

From my point of view, if you are going gigabit, then you need to go dual cpu.

[SilverPriest]

I wouldn't touch creative with a 9 foot pole.
Have you seen their attitude towards drivers, the quality of their drivers, and the general lack of caring, and customer support.
I dont know about you, but i would rather have a game theatre xp, an acoustic edge or something rather than a modern creative card. (i say modern as i have an awe32 begging to go back in me pc @ the moment)

[Deviant]

Originally posted by Tiggerz
Oh by the way.

Intel have released the new gigabit cards. They are 10/100/1000 compatible.. You'll need a PCI-X slot in your server to handle the server card (PCI 66/133Mhz) but the desktop card will run in a normal PCI bus.

These cards are the fastet on the market by some 100% over the next fastest card- the server card will cruise at around 900 m/bits and the desktop cards at between 500 and 650 m/bits.

remember that for every gigabit of network traffic you need 1Ghz of processor speed just to handle the IP stack loading. Scale this up and down to find the real impact on the machine.

From my point of view, if you are going gigabit, then you need to go dual cpu.

Got to disagree with you there. That like saying ATA100 is 100 MBytes or 800Mbits per second, and you need a dual processor system to run one. Same argument.

The PCI card is based on s 33MHz bus, and the databus aint that flash either (32bit), I mean it is so slow compared to processor busses running at 266MHz etc that they had to make the AGP port (66MHz, 128bit bus?) to to give graphics extra speed. Nothing that the PCI bus can transfer can load a CPU. In fact 32bit bus multiplied by 33 MHz equals 1056 Mbits/s so the poor old PCI bus is going to be so loaded by that its 99% full and wont be able to transfer the data to the HDD. I bet thats why you only achieve 500-600 Mbit throughput on those new NIC's.

I doubt any NIC is going to use up more than 1% of todays processors. Remember the data only has to be passed along a bus, and with DMA (direct memory access), the CPU probably doesn't even know most of it is occuring.

[Tiggerz]

Those AWEs were good cards. I have a couple of the earlier versions. Still put out dang good sound.

The new creative cards seem to be getting some flack. Its what I mean by good times and bad times.. Creative actually make good hardware.

Problem is they treat their programmers badly and tend to use young uns. I think driver development is still done in Singapore which is not really the best of places for writing good software.

Usually when creative start getting negative reviews, they tend to buck up their ideas a bit in the next release.

When I last worked with creative in Singapore they had just gone through the split with the two founders.. Problem is that it was the hardware chap that stayed.. Their software has suffered slightly ever since.

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Originally posted by Deviant

The PCI card is based on s 33MHz bus, and the databus aint that flash either (32bit), I mean it is so slow compared to processor busses running at 266MHz etc that they had to make the AGP port (66MHz, 128bit bus?) to to give graphics extra speed. Nothing that the PCI bus can transfer can load a CPU. In fact 32bit bus multiplied by 33 MHz equals 1056 Mbits/s so the poor old PCI bus is going to be so loaded by that its 99% full and wont be able to transfer the data to the HDD. I bet thats why you only achieve 500-600 Mbit throughput on those new NIC's.


That's why 3GIO is so important. Just read in the latest issue of atomic that we can expect to see first gen desktop mobos next year. Of course this is going to mean a lot of changes as graphics cards will be going to PCI-X and abandoning the now old agp. Also they are planning on doing the full scale release of serial ata at the same time (long over due if you ask me).
I don't really see Gig Nics as being useful until then.

[Tiggerz]

Originally posted by Deviant


Got to disagree with you there. That like saying ATA100 is 100 MBytes or 800Mbits per second, and you need a dual processor system to run one. Same argument.

The PCI card is based on s 33MHz bus, and the databus aint that flash either (32bit), I mean it is so slow compared to processor busses running at 266MHz etc that they had to make the AGP port (66MHz, 128bit bus?) to to give graphics extra speed. Nothing that the PCI bus can transfer can load a CPU. In fact 32bit bus multiplied by 33 MHz equals 1056 Mbits/s so the poor old PCI bus is going to be so loaded by that its 99% full and wont be able to transfer the data to the HDD. I bet thats why you only achieve 500-600 Mbit throughput on those new NIC's.

I doubt any NIC is going to use up more than 1% of todays processors. Remember the data only has to be passed along a bus, and with DMA (direct memory access), the CPU probably doesn't even know most of it is occuring.

Your talking about the desktop card. This uses either 33Mhz or 66Mhz bus which is why you dont get true gigabit. However network cards do indeed chew up processor power. Not by the amount of data they throw through, but by the processing of the IP stack. Remember that this is part of the OS and with IP over ethernet you have some 5 levels of protocol that needs messing about with for each packet. With the current IP design this really does hit the CPU rather heavily. This is why I mentioned earlier about 1gigabit of traffice = 1 ghz of cpu processing - obviously 100mbit = 100mhz which is why at the moment you see little performance impact. Although being realistic a 100mbit card will probably be working around the 30-40mbit rate anyhow.

Gigabit ethernet does not mean you actually get gigabit throughput. There is a heck of a lot of system design that actually needs to be done to get close with this. At the last Intel training, the closest throughput seen on a desktop card was about 560mbit which is around 90 odd % of its max expected performance - this was 100% faster than the non intel cards tested.

On the server side, the Pro 1000/Mf card uses a special PCI-X slot running 64 bit at 133Mhz.. Boards with these slots should be here on the 7th June. In the training we saw the cards running close to 95% at rated max around 900mbits (forget the actual figure). However, the system had to be optimised as the processor loading was really high working with the IP stack. Since gigabit is aimed at the server to workstation market primarily - better performance is gained from more processing power.

Out of interest if you really want to see a machine die performance wise - try plugging in a 10Gbe card. Been looking at these during the iSCSI training.

[Deviant]

Tiggerz, do you have any figures on how much a 100Mbps NIC will load a 1 GHz processor for example, and how much a 1000Mbps NIC would also load the same CPU? Curiosity sake.

You talk of 5 levels of protocal to process, but this is going to be the same with any NIC isn't it. Its only when you start using Bridges and Routers etc connected to a PC that some of these layers are already processed.

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by Gh0s7 L3mUr


That's why 3GIO is so important. Just read in the latest issue of atomic that we can expect to see first gen desktop mobos next year. Of course this is going to mean a lot of changes as graphics cards will be going to PCI-X and abandoning the now old agp. Also they are planning on doing the full scale release of serial ata at the same time (long over due if you ask me).
I don't really see Gig Nics as being useful until then.
I don't really like the whole 3GIO thing really. Sure the speed will be good, but the ease of installation will mean that anyone could upgrade their computer themselves.