Hi

I'm going to buy the Asrock 939SLI32-eSATA2 motherboard.
http://www.asrock.com/product/939SLI32-eSATA2.htm

The board comes with firewire and 10/100/100 lan.

I have 2 network cards doing nothing as follows:

Allied Telesyn 2500 Network Card
closest I can find is here:
http://www.alliedtelesyn.co.uk/en-gb...fid=54&pid=196

D-Link DFE-530TX Network Card
http://www.alliedtelesyn.co.uk/en-gb...fid=54&pid=196


I also have a Pinnacle Firewire Booster 2B card doing nothing
http://cgi.ebay.com/PINNACLE-FIRE-WI...cmdZViewI tem


As it will cost me nothing either way, should I use these cards or the
onboard solutions.

Will the onboard solutions drain much power from the cpu or is it negligable
now?

Would the onboard solutions, being newer, have more features?

Would using more pci cards mean fewer resources?


Thanks

Pete

Pete <not@this.address> wrote

No point in using the cards now.

Nope.

It was always negligable.

Probably not with those cards.

Yes, and is pointless.

Pete wrote:
made a typo you definitely should go with the onboard networking since
the cards you cite are totally obsolete and their maximum speed is 10
times slower. The firewire card you cite is a really bizarre bit of
hardware that seems to have been made when firewire was something
strange and new.

I'd certainly stick with the internal parts where possible. In those
cases where it might be possible to surpass normal MB hardware, such as
high-end sound then it would make sense to disable the onboard and use a
top-end PCI or PCI-E add-on.

Power dissipation probably isn't a major concern either way but the more
components you insert in the system the less efficient the cooling may
become because of stagnant air in the PCI socket area.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com

Rod Speed wrote:
Thanks Rod

John McGaw wrote:
Bizarre? Why? I'm intreagued. It was given to me and I've never used it; I
should have known.

Thanks John

Use the onboard versions. They do not use CPU cycles appreciably. And this
will leave you with unused PCI slots.

--
DaveW

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