Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:36:44 -0800 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Paulo Roberto <nirv199@yahoo.com>, Bram Van Dam <gandalfbram@pandora.be>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Realtek Message-ID: <200303062136.44471.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <20030306230206.70461.qmail@web14913.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20030306230206.70461.qmail@web14913.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Thursday 06 March 2003 15:02, Paulo Roberto wrote:
> --- Bram Van Dam <gandalfbram@pandora.be> wrote:
> > cheap they are they do their job fairly well. If performance isn't
> > an issue then go for it.
>
> I couldn't agree more. If you are just staying in 55 mph, you don't
> need a Ferrari.
It's not a ford vs. ferrari problem, it's that the ford only has first
gear, so you're doing 45 mph at redline and in grave danger of blowing
the heads off continuously.
The problem with the RealTek chipset is that the packets have to be
aligned on some completely stupid boundary in memory (32 bytes if memory
serves). The driver code ends up copying the packet data to a tempory
buffer before sending it for almost every outgoing packet, which is just
totally stupid.
There are dozens of other chipsets in the same price range as the
RealTek's that don't require this stupidity, most of them supported by
the dc(4) driver. Track down a couple of different cards, try them out
on your own, and they buy a bunch of them.
Belkin is selling a card based on the Intel (formerly DEC) 21143 for $15;
if you can find them in bulk you can probably get them for $8-9. Those
are a LOT better than the RealTek cards.
JUST SAY NO.
--
Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?
Wes Peters wes@softweyr.com
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