From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Mar 6 21:36:51 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF3A137B405 for ; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:36:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-relay.omnis.com (smtp-relay.omnis.com [216.239.128.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 90D4A43FA3 for ; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:36:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from softweyr.homeunix.net (66-75-151-22.san.rr.com [66.75.151.22]) by smtp-relay.omnis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47C754346A; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:36:45 -0800 (PST) From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr To: Paulo Roberto , Bram Van Dam , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Realtek Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:36:44 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 References: <20030306230206.70461.qmail@web14913.mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20030306230206.70461.qmail@web14913.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200303062136.44471.wes@softweyr.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thursday 06 March 2003 15:02, Paulo Roberto wrote: > --- Bram Van Dam 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message