Use onboard Realtek 8111D Lan or Intel Network Adapter?

[Trigeminal]

Hey all,

Looking for some input. Should I use my onboard Realtek 8111D Dual Lan or Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Network Adapter?

I purchased the intel card when my ISP told my MB was causing the issues with internet, turns out they are idiots. Now I have a new rig. Is there any point to using the add-on card? Should I save myself the trouble of installing another driver and the 4-5 secs it adds to my cold boot?

Let me know what you think.

Trigeminal

Silverstone FT02-B - GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5 - Core i7 930 - Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme-1366 RT Rev. C CPU Heatsink - Corsair 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 RAM @ 7-8-7-20 - SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5850 - SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W Power Supply - OCZ Agility 2 120 GB SSD - Western Digital Black 750GB HDD - Western Digital Green 2TB HDD - Windows7 x64 - HP LP2465 24" S-PVA LCD @ 1920x1200

[Octopuss]

I was in same position in past. I had weird disconnects and lags while gaming, but during normal work too. Bought extra Intel card and it was all good.
On the other hand, on my current board I use the onboard Realtek without any problems. I still like the idea of dedicated network card for some reason, even though there is probably no point in it.

By the way what the ISP told you is bull**** indeed, you don't have to be an expert to see they were simply lazy to investigate/fix their end ;P
Oh and I don't think there would be any delay caused by additional drivers. That makes no sense. You would disable the onboard thing anyway.

[Darkje]

Just use the onboard one, at least as long as you feel comfortable with it. If you think it's causing problems you can always add an other one. Sometimes NIC's (onboard or dedicated) can get broken in strange ways, but normally onboard should be fine.

[Psycho101]

Any onboard solution probably won't be doing anything 100% in hardware. Most dedicated NIC cards will have the vast majority of their functions executed by the onboard I/O components.

The question is, in this day of dual, quad, hexa-core CPU's sometimes OC'd to 4.8GHz and beyond (Sandy Bridge OC's nicely) is it really needed?

I used a D-Link card for years and only stopped when I found I needed the PCI slot for my sound card. I've noticed no difference on my current board or on a EP45-UD3P. In fact, you'll notice much more difference quality wise getting rid of onboard sound that an onboard NIC. People may think onboard sound is fine, and so did I... until I listened to my games, CD's and films through decent hardware, not a codec IC.

I'd keep it for troubleshooting purposes, or ebay it. I kept mine in my tool box.