What are your suggestions for DELL 690 Ethernet cards?
What are your suggestions for DELL 690 Ethernet cards?
I'm using a vintage Dell 690 desktop. My ISP can handle more than 1144mps, but I'm only getting 350mps. I suspect the Broadcom Net Xtreme 57xx controller might be limiting performance. Are there any Ethernet cards available that could help me utilize my internet speed better? I really appreciate any suggestions. Thank you.
Well, it might not be worth it at all.
If your setup uses SATA drives capped at SATA II with a 250MB/s limit (which is around 200 in reality), and your internet speed cap is about 143MB/s, you'll find very few options that can deliver that much bandwidth to just one device. These high speeds are typically reserved for multiple users.
A 1Gbps Ethernet connection usually provides roughly 80MB/s, so a 2.5Gbps network card would be necessary.
Your motherboard seems to support PCIe 1.0. Most of the 2.5Gbps Ethernet adapters I found are PCIe 2.0, which would halve your bandwidth and bring you back down to 1Gbps.
If you manage to find a 4x 2.5Gbps card, that could be a solution.
Moreover, you might encounter the DMI speed restriction. All connections from the PCIe interface to the CPU usually share one DMI port, which may not be sufficient for all tasks at once. Using the main x16 slot for your network adapter would help keep things CPU-based and faster.
Lastly, high-speed downloading demands significant CPU resources. Considering the system's age, this could lead to performance issues—fast downloads but a sluggish overall experience.
(It was actually quite typical for complaints to come from new Google Fiber users who experienced slow hard drives or computers that couldn't handle the full bandwidth.)