Can't get 100Mb in PCI

[Guest]

I am running XP Professional without SP2. I can not get a network card to
run at 100Mb if it's plugged into a PCI slot. If I hard set it to 100Mb, it
disables itself. It will only work in AutoSense mode. In that mode it will
run considerably slower than 100MB. The on-board network card runs fine at
100Mb. I have already tried 2 different PCI cards.

 

[Dana Brash]

What brand/model NIC? brand/model Motherboard?

are you using any particular tool to measure speed?

 

[Guest]

Both network cards were Linksys. One was NC100, the other is LNE100TX. The
PC involved is HP d530. The data being transferred is 7MB - 18MB
radiological images. The difference in speed can be seen in the overall
image transfer rate (2 seconds vs. 2 minutes).

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Both network cards were Linksys.

Darryl,

Linksys again! I wonder how far I would have counted already if
I had counted all messages in this newsgroups from users
complaining about network problems with Linksys equipment.

Have you tried updating the drivers to the latest version? That
may help.

Can you try any other brand of network adapter, at least for a
test?

Hans-Georg

 

[Guest]

I seem to have the latest posted version of drivers. I will try to locate a
different brand of card at my facility.

 

[Dana Brash]

Hi Darryl,

I don't really have much else to offer, maybe some more questions for your
quest...

Are you adding a second NIC, or replacing the onboard NIC? What is your
goal? Could you post an IPCONFIG /ALL?

Have you contacted HP support? I don't know their on-board architecture,
but PCI is probably at 32bit/33MHz. It wouldn't surprise me if the on-board
architecture was faster, but that's just a guess.

Have you got the latest drivers installed?

Is everything else in the environment the same between using the two cards
(cable, switch, subnet, etc)?

There are ways to be scientific about testing the variance in speeds, but if
the difference is that stark you probably don't need to...

The Linksys site didn't seem to offer any help, and I've seen decent reviews
for the LNE100TX, but it is still a sub $20 level NIC. The NC100 I also saw
retailing for $15. The onboard is Broadcom, no? Have you tried another
Broadcom, or even an Intel NIC? To be honest, and hopefully without
starting a debate that better belongs on tomshardware, I don't think it's
really fair to expect a low-end, PCI NIC to compete with an onboard,
mid-high end NIC. I like the mid-range Intel NIC's myself....

=d=