I have been wondering, is there any difference in internet speed when you are using a PCI Lan card compared to onboard lan? I have heard that you can browse the web faster and all, but is this true?
Current boards are as good as PCI Lan cards.
There's two possible conditions as to why a PCI NIC is better than on-board
1. If your CPU isn't very good and struggles to keep up, a PCI NIC might yield you slightly more performance as it relieves the CPU from that part.
2. If your on-board is say only 10/100 mb/s and your router can handle 10/100/1000 mb/s. Although this will not increase internet speed, it will increase network transfer speed.
1. If your CPU isn't very good and struggles to keep up, a PCI NIC might yield you slightly more performance as it relieves the CPU from that part.
2. If your on-board is say only 10/100 mb/s and your router can handle 10/100/1000 mb/s. Although this will not increase internet speed, it will increase network transfer speed.
I used one before. It dropped 15 ping for me and made it lag less once I disabled on-board LAN because the NIC does all the internet processing and stuff. I noticed an increase in browsing speed and download speed as well. Try it out and see if it works for you. It works especially well for you if you have DSL.