Just curious if there's much difference in cpu load between having a PCI or CNR ethernet card. Planning on building a retro gaming pc circa 2000 and would like it to be networkable for games like UT99.
There is a lot of variety just within PCI cards. Some do full offloading, some push most back to the CPU. The CNR card pushes 100% of the work back to the CPU.
kolderman wrote on 2020-03-28, 21:14:There is a lot of variety just within PCI cards. Some do full offloading, some push most back to the CPU. The CNR card pushes 100% of the work back to the CPU.
Ah in that case, PCI seems the way to go. Probably an Intel Pro NIC of the time. Thanks!
kolderman wrote on 2020-03-28, 21:14:The CNR card pushes 100% of the work back to the CPU.
The CNR card typically has the analog interface such as the PHY while the controller is in the chipsets. This does not imply that the built-in Ethernet controller is dumb and push everything into CPU. The built-in Ethernet controllers in Intel/VIA/NVIDIA chipsets have much better offloading capabilities than standalone Realtek RTL8139 PCI Ethernet which has dominated the low-end PCI Ethernet add-in cards.
