Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 21:30:59 +0000 From: Karl Pielorz <kpielorz@tdx.co.uk> To: Costa Morris <costa@cortx.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ethernet Cards Message-ID: <34D0F513.DCD7B5DD@tdx.co.uk> References: <01bd2cfb$4dfe5950$0cddcfcf@cman.cortx.com>
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Hi, That is an interesting question - and not easily answered... The general rule I guess would be 'probably'. The ISA card is limited in it's throughput, but the throughput of the ISA bus is a lot more than a 10Mb network card could hope to send / receive per second... The ISA bus (i beleive) has a higher latency, which would go down on PCI. PCI is usually bus-mastering, or uses a larger 'memory' map than an ISA equivalent (so long as you don't get a 32 bit PCI NE-2000 clone ;-) And if the system is using a PCI network card - it could well find it has more free time for other devices (even if there only other ISA cards)... Bottom line: If it was me, and I could afford it easily, I would - I wouldn't expect it to make the machine a 'monster' though. As a good example, I have a 486DX4-100 here, and a Pentium-Pro 200. The 486 has an NE-2100 ISA card in it, the Pentium-Pro has a DEC 21040 card in it. I get 820k/sec when pushing files from the 486 to the PPro. If I swap the card in the 486 for a PCI one (admitadly 486's probably don't handle PCI too well) it goes up to 910k/sec, not much on an improvement. When I swapped the card for a DLink DE-220 (an NE-2000 clone) it went down to 460k/sec. No doubt someone else will venture a better more concise answer... Costa Morris wrote: > > I am running 2.2.2R and i have a 16bit kingston ehternet card which probes > as > NE2000 16 bit. I host several sites and have a fair amount of traffic. > > i was wondering if i would notice a performance difference if i upgraded to > a > 32bit PCI card with all the trimmings. or should i not even bother. please > let me know. > > thanks in advance! > > -costa
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