**Official ABIT IP-35 Pro Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

[renethx]

Has anybody noticed that the dual Gb LAN RTL8110SC/RTL8110SC is on the PCI bus? The following NTttcp ethernet throughput test shows that RTL8110SC is 35% to 40% slower than a PCI Express Gb LAN such as Marvell 88E8056 or Realtek RTL8111B:



with higher CPU usage:



Source: PROHARDVER! - Alaplapok Core 2 Duo ala - 2. resz - Nyomtatobarat verzio (January 2, 2007). Typos in these charts:

• "Asus P5B Dlx (Marvell 88E8801)" should be "Asus P5B Dlx (Marvell 88E8001)". 88E8001 is a PCI Gb LAN.
• "ECS PX1 (RTL 8139)" should be "ECS PX1 (RTL8110S)". RTL8110S is a PCI Gb LAN, a variant of RTL8110SC.

Another NTttcp test shows a similar result: ComputerBase - Test: Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi Edition (May 21, 2007)

Another test in The Tech Report - Intel's P35 Express chipset (May 21, 2007) also shows that the PCI Gb LAN 88E8001 is much slower than other PCI Express Gb LANs, though it does not include RTL8110SC.

Abit uses this crappy PCI Gb LAN solution in AB9 QuadGT too. There are only 6 PCI Express lanes in the southbridge. In these motherboards, the lanes are assigned as follows:

• 4: PCI Express x16 slot at x4
• 1: PCI Express x1 slot
• 1: IDE controller

while in ASUS P5B/P5K series motherboards with two PCI Express x16 slots,

• 4: shared by the PCI Express x16 slot at x4 and the PCI Express x1 slot (x4 is automatically slowed down to x2 when x1 is used)
• 1: IDE controller
• 1: PCI Express Gb LAN

If you want something better than onboard lan just buy an intel pci-e x1 card. It will be better than any onboard lan anyways. I haven't had any problems with these PCI realtek chips while I have had problems with PCI-E Marvell chips before.

Yes, I agree... Myself, I always use 3COM or Intel cards with all my computers excepted the BadAxe2, which already come with a excellent Intel Pro 1000 onboard NIC.

Well, not always true.

• Intel PRO/1000 PT PCI Express adapter = 82572GI (MAC/PHY; PCI Express bus)
• Intel D975XBX2 NIC = 82573L (MAC/PHY; ICH7 lacks a Gb ethernet controller!; PCI Express bus)
• All the latest Intel motherboards' NIC = 82566DC/DM (PHY only; GLCI)

Needless to say, the throughput performance of these three are more or less the same. As already shown in the charts cited in my previous post,

• Throughput: any PCI express Gb NIC or NVIDIA NIC is almost identical.
  
  
• CPU usage: NVIDIA = Intel PHY < Intel PCIe < Realtek, Marvell (see also this article)

Anyway, ABIT should not put a PCI NIC in its flagship (?) motherboards. Or you may have to pay $40 just for a NIC card.