NIC: PCI card or integrated?

[ShawnD1]

My motherboard has an integrated NIC on it and I have an extra PCI NIC card. Is the PCI card better than the integrated? Does it matter which one I use?

[stroyal]

The few intergrated ones that don't connect through the PCI bus are probably better. Other than that I would think the quality of the LAN card or chip would be the only differance.

[John Prophet]

I always wonder about stuff like that myself....when you go from onbaord video to a video card you "free up" the cpu a lot, but Im not sure about nics and modems etc. Although I have seen them in motherboard reviews talking about how much faster this onboard nic is compared to that one. I guess it depends on what the machine is used for...if its not bleeding edge then it probably wont matter much.

JP

i use the onboard on my asus A78nx-D dont really notice a problem with it.

i think onboard hardware is coming along nicely.

[HeadBand]

only thing bad about onboard NIC is when it goes out but yeah you could easily pop in a PCI card then

as far as speed goes not sure which is faster but it likley wont matter unless its a bigtime server or something