On Feb 2, 2008, at 11:12 PM, Ron Johnson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 02/02/08 22:59, Johan Kullstam wrote: [snip]Btw are there are any motherboards *not* using this POS realtek? Every new board I have bothered to check had it. I guess some might have an intel ethernet chipset. Unfortunately, newegg didn't give a way to search motherboard on the basis of on-board ethernet make.NVIDIA boards use forcedeth.
Which may or may not be any better. It was written based on reverse- engineering a binary-only driver and it's been notably buggy in the past. The RealTek driver was at least written with the benefit of manufacturer specs, but of course the chip design is pretty low-end.
If you want an Intel Ethernet chipset you'll probably have to spring for a "real" Intel motherboard or use a separate card. I've also seen Broadcom Tigon 3 gigabit chipsets in some Opteron systems, and those seem to give good performance. I can't tell you what motherboards have them, though; I've only seen them in pre-built systems.