At 06:51 PM 7/12/2007, HLDS User wrote:
The onboard network card failed on my CS dedicated server. It has been temporarily replaced by a 3com EtherLink XL (3C905B-TX). Is this card suitable for supporting a high bandwidth server, or do others have better recommendations? In the past, I've always sworn by Intel NIC's, and am considering replacing it with Intel's PILA8470C3 or PWLA8490MT (a little pricey). It does seem like some latency issues were introduced with this 3com card (it's been in a few months). Anyone have any pertinent experience/advice they would care to share in regards to a really solid NIC, that keeps CPU usage down as well, with a solid driver set that gives options, like cpu priority, etc.? OS is W2K3 server. Link is 100Mbps, and I don't ever see going to a Gbit link, at least with this machine.
905B's don't support hardware checksum offloading, or irq mitigation, if i remember correctly. Most modern ethernet cards should be fine. I wouldn't buy anything that has onboard nvidia ethernet because of specific hardware design flaws. _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
