Onboard or Separate Ethernet Card

[Buck Turgidson]

I have an Ethernet card, but my PC also has one. Which one would be better
in terms of bus contention? I get some audio dropouts with the onboard. I
was wondering if installing and using the card might help.

Thanks.

 

[Mike Walsh]

What are you running when you get the audio dropouts?
Ethernet performance will vary depending on the ethernet card and operating system. Some OSs don't work well together on a local network e.g. WinXP and Win98. Many no-name cards, as well as D-Link, have mediocre performance which can be noticeable on a local network. Even if your ethernet card and OS have poor performance it will not affect your internet speed because even a poorly performing ethernet card is far faster than an internet connection.
As for which of your ethernet cards will work better, I can't tell you. In many cases e.g. sound a separate card will be better than a built in card, but many separate ethernet cards are mediocre and many built in ethernet chip sets are quite good.

 

[John McGaw]

I have an Ethernet card, but my PC also has one. Which one would be better
in terms of bus contention? I get some audio dropouts with the onboard. I
was wondering if installing and using the card might help.

Thanks.

Operating properly with the correct drivers either sort of Ethernet NIC
should provide equivalent performance. If you are having dropouts with
an audio stream, a decidedly low-bandwidth application, you likely have
some other issues. You might want to install NetMeter to get an idea of
what sort of bandwidth you are using and to see if the dropouts
correspond to anything else that is happening.

 

[kony]

I have an Ethernet card, but my PC also has one. Which one would be better
in terms of bus contention? I get some audio dropouts with the onboard. I
was wondering if installing and using the card might help.

Thanks.

Impossible to say, you didn't provide any of the details
about the hardware. Since others don't have this problem,
the details unique to your system really matter.

Generally if you've a PCIe slot, get a PCIe sound card. You
might try fiddling with the latency settings in the bios.
Onboard NIC doesn't necessarily mean more or less bus
contention, there are multiple ways onboard NICs can be
logically arranged.

The easy answer is pop the new card in and try it,
temporarily disabling the integrated.

 

[jaster]

What are you running when you get the audio dropouts? Ethernet
performance will vary depending on the ethernet card and operating
system. Some OSs don't work well together on a local network e.g. WinXP
and Win98. Many no-name cards, as well as D-Link, have mediocre
performance which can be noticeable on a local network. Even if your
ethernet card and OS have poor performance it will not affect your
internet speed because even a poorly performing ethernet card is far
faster than an internet connection. As for which of your ethernet cards
will work better, I can't tell you. In many cases e.g. sound a separate
card will be better than a built in card, but many separate ethernet
cards are mediocre and many built in ethernet chip sets are quite good.

I find the most prevalent cause of my audio dropouts is cpu usage.
Whenever an single app or several concurrent apps hit 100% cpu usage the
audio delays.

OTOH, if your audio is streaming from the internet it could be the source
of the streaming media or congestion on your line. Again for me, it's
more often the source provider than my system, like some media sources
reset connections every 60-90 minutes.

 

[OpenCat]

My advice to any one based upon my knowledge of interference caused by
onboard NICs is to use a add on NIC when ever possible especially with the
advent of the newer PCI Express expansion slots which allow for wicked quick
data transfer rateas.

 

[Calab]

My advice to any one based upon my knowledge of interference caused by
onboard NICs is to use a add on NIC when ever possible especially with
the advent of the newer PCI Express expansion slots which allow for wicked
quick data transfer rateas.

There is no "inteference" caused by onboard NICs.

I've never had an issue with an onboard NIC, be it Linux, XP, 2000 or even
DOS. Can't say much for Vista, but I'm sure they work fine.

 

[kony]

There is no "inteference" caused by onboard NICs.

I've never had an issue with an onboard NIC, be it Linux, XP, 2000 or even
DOS. Can't say much for Vista, but I'm sure they work fine.

Agreed, onboard NICs work fine. They sometimes uses
slightly more CPU time than a higher end (Intel, 3Com) nic
and occasionally put some noise on the power rails which
ends up in the output of poorly implemented integrated audio
on a motherboard, but it's more of a reason to upgrade the
sound than the NIC.