So I went out and bought two top-end Intel I350 dual nic cards, which connect to the mobo using PCI-e x4 connectivity. On my newer system the cards work fine. However, in my old system (an LGA775 socket, 975X chipset board) the system completely fails to detect that I've inserted the card. I wrote to MSI, and they inform me that the PCI-e x16/x8 slots are only capable of running gfx cards.
Which means I now have a requirement for a replacement mobo which will support the new intel network adapter. The problem is LGA775 is old-hat these days and the only boards I can find are micro-atx with only two RAM slots or DDR3 vs DDR2 - I have DDR2 memory, which would mean that I need to buy new RAM to support the maximum 8GB (I'm virtualising, remember) for full flexibility. Plus I'm out of cash now.
Alternatively I could take a dremel to one of the PCI-e x1 slots and jury-rigg the x4 card into an x1 slot.
Ho Hum.
Regards, Daniel Llewellyn.
On 24 Apr 2012, at 16:35, Ian G wrote:
> realtek nics are generally best to avoid due to bugs in the oss drivers and realteks reluctance of being open makes them a "Cheapo" solution. Try sticking to intel pro nics, esp. if using them for VM. Another good thing to look at is the option flags the nics support.. VLAN MTU/HW(de)Tagging, TSO etc. These things take load of your host when guests are savaging I/O.
>
> Daniel Llewellyn <diddledan@???> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm trying to find some PCI Gigabit Network Interface Cards that I can use in a virtualisation server (32bit i.e. NOT PCI-X) - the server(s) are two re-tasked desktop machines which I doubt the ability to run PCI-e x4 in the spare PCI-e x16 (x8 electrical) slots. While there are plenty of el-cheapo gigabit adapters I wonder about their ability to keep-up with server duties (several VMs with public-facing services and a router/firewall software appliance - all hobbyist though). Ideally I would like 4 gigabit ports split between the two PCs (2 in each), and have the aforementioned PCI-e x16(8 electrical) slot available in both machines (though the ability to run non-gfx is in question), and two spare 32bit PCI slots in each.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Would el-cheapo realtek 8169-based be suitable for server duties?
>>
>> Thanks for reading this and any help you may give,
>> Daniel
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