1. Do you not have any available PCI slots?

2. I would look at this thread:
Why are 3Com NICs in such high regard?

3. Back in the day, I found the best PCI cards as far as CPU usage and throughput were the 3COM Parallel Tasking and Parallel Tasking II cards.

For ISA though... uggghhh. If you are doing anything else that uses the ISA bus at the same time it is going to kill performance.

Of the three that you have, the 3com is definitely the best. The D-Link is NE2000 based so it will perform the same as the other NE2000 card.

With the speed of machine that you have, you may not see much perceived performance difference at 10Mbps, but you’ll probably see less CPU usage with the 3com.

Thanks guys. No unfortunately PCI situation is rough. Only 2 slots, so I need to choose between a good 2d card, voodoo, USB or ethernet, or end up with a voodoo banshee, but then it's still a decision to be made between USB and ethernet.

Don't plan to do much on the network side, this is more for convenience as the machine has no easy way to transfer large files, but I will stick with the 3com for now.

Regarding the Intel cards, are they better than 3com? They seem to go for a premium on eBay.

Very interesting thready linked also, thanks. Reading now. Surprised to see the Intel Pro100 getting passed by the 3Com

Since you using Windows 95, I'd use a PCI network card over a USB card if you care about performance.