NIC choice

[jathor]

I'll keep this short and sweet,

 

I'm building a home server and needed a network card, I scoured kijiji, craigslist, all online retailers and finally found something on ebay, it's a brand new Intel i340-t2 server network card ( http://ark.intel.com/products/49185/Intel-Ethernet-Server-Adapter-I340-T2 ) for 65ish $. The issue is: there isn't anything online that explains or reviews this card, the only thing I've found is that it is made for IBM by intel.... I don't know what that means for me. Will it work with windows 7 pro/ultimate? are there drivers? etc. the only drivers i've found are for the i340-t4. Would they work? intel's site does not list it as a compatible device for that driver.

 

need your collective expertise

 

thanks

 

Edit: if all is well, do you think it's a good choice for the money? comes to around 80 with shipping.

[beebskadoo]

Intel NIC's are the best in general. I don't see why this doesn't work with W7.

[d33g33]

It should be fine, I would just check that its not PCI-X if its a server card.

 

Any reason you're going with a server card over a retail consumer intel card? If you're not port teaming or anything like that I cant see a benefit to a server grade card.

 

(coming from someone with a server grade card in their PC) 

[jathor]

yeah I'll be teaming them for increased bandwidth and i checked it's a pci-e 4x . I'll be using it as a backup pc to backup 3 laptops and 2 desktops and as a raid 5 server (hardware raid) for streaming music and movies so I was wanting to get as much bandwidth as i can get.