onboard network controller vs PCI/PCI-E slot controller

[sapphirethunder]

A bit stupid question, but is there any true difference between using the network controller on the motherboard and the dedicated controller card.

 

I have been looking for answer all around but all the answers I have found are either lacking, without any kind of backing/source or from like 10 years ago.

 

What would be the pros and/or cons of using a dedicated card instead of the one included in motherboard.

[Arty]

A bit stupid question, but is there any true difference between using the network controller on the motherboard and the dedicated controller card.

 

I have been looking for answer all around but all the answers I have found are either lacking, without any kind of backing/source or from like 10 years ago.

most on board controller s support gigabit so if you want more get a card, and most wifi cars on board have ac, wifi/bluethooth

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

the performance will be based on the NIC used, not whether it is onboard or on an expansion card. my built in gigabit NICs have all been tested to give 120MBps (960Mbps) throughput at 100% saturation with file transfer, which is astonishing having only 4% overhead

[sapphirethunder]

the performance will be based on the NIC used,

 

 

Exactly my point. Is there something which makes expansion card NIC better than a basic NIC in motherboard?

Is there any true pros to using dedicated NIC over onboard one?

If, then what are those pros and what NIC should be used to get those pros.

 

 

Or does it only matter when using gigabit connection/router/switch/whatever?

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

Exactly my point. Is there something which makes expansion card NIC better than a basic NIC in motherboard?

Is there any true pros to using dedicated NIC over onboard one?

If, then what are those pros and what NIC should be used to get those pros.

 

 

Or does it only matter when using gigabit connection/router/switch/whatever?

if all of your router and switches are gigabit, then a gigabit NIC is a good thing. any quality NIC is good enough for most purposes. some people like the Killer NICs for their packet prioritization and stuff, but my built in Intel and Realtek NICs have done well for me.

[DerBernd]

In my experience you would be hard pressed to find any meaningful difference between an onboard ethernet nic and a PCI/PCIe nic. There could be minor latency issues but every home router I ping answers in <1 ms no matter which nic I used (onboard,PCI or USB3.0->Ethernet). Since I do not play any extremely fast paced FPS I can only tell you that any combination of my NIC and Switches does work. I had no latency or bandwith issues with internet gaming even with ~20 wired devices on the network.

The only time I really needed the PCI nic was to diagnose some connectivity issues related to dust in the ethernet port.

 

Stuff you might want out of a PCI/PCIe nic is having double or quadruple ports with link aggregation. There are affordable dual NIC by intel with teaming (link aggregation in other words). For home use a feature that rarely comes in handy (since you need basically a raid array to saturate the connection). Another scenario would be using your computer in two different wired networks. Again something that home users rarely encounter, apart from setting up a pfsense box (pc that works as a router) or something. Another one would be 10 Gigabit ethernet repeating the lack of need for it in home application.

[skywake]

The only reason you would need a PCI/PCi-e NIC is when:

1. The onboard one dies

2. The onboard one isn't fast enough for your needs (i.e. it's 100Mbps and you want 1Gbps, or it's 1Gbps and you want 10Gbps)

3. You want/need more ports for some reason. Link aggregation for a file server or similar

[DerBernd]

The only reason you would need a PCI/PCi-e NIC is when:

1. The onboard one dies

2. The onboard one isn't fast enough for your needs (i.e. it's 100Mbps and you want 1Gbps, or it's 1Gbps and you want 10Gbps)

3. You want/need more ports for some reason. Link aggregation for a file server or similar

 

I thought of another one: dedicated nic for a VM