Dell complaints

hotrodlincoln

At work we have a number of Optiplex GX240 desktops. We recently upgraded to a gigabit network. I believe that the 240s have either in-board network or a 10/100 NIC.

I just spent way too much time not finding an answer on Dell's support site. All I want to know is if these PCs can handle a 1 gigabit network card. If so, any recommendations of which brand/model will work best in these machines?

Thanks all.

Hotrodlincoln
moderator

KE7EHA · Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:05 am Post subject:

you should be able to put a gigabit card in the machine.

If you have a switch, the gigabit switch shoud limit to 100Mbit if that is all that the card can support
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hotrodlincoln · Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:56 pm Post subject: Thanks!

I'll talk to my networking guy so he can go to http://www.newegg.com and price out some cards tomorrow morning.

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 5:42 pm Post subject:

Install? Probably. You won't get full performance, it will bottleneck at the frontside bus at somewhere around 1/3 of the card's ability. Cache on the NIC, assuming it has that, somewhat ameliorates this bottleneck from the network's perspective, but not from the user's.
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hotrodlincoln · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:02 pm Post subject:

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 6:18 pm Post subject:

Throughput can't exceed the FSB rate, which in GX240 is somewhere in the neighborhood of 333MHz. You can buy the cards and they'll probably 'work', but the user won't see the 10X increase the card suggests. FSB has a lot of other things to do besides service the NIC, so nowhere near the full 333MHz is available for network exchanges, and everything above the available capacity has to be deferred.

GigaNICs are something the system can grow into, but don't expect a day/night difference in performance when you install them in a 240.
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KE7EHA · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:45 pm Post subject:

The FSB is moot anyway, as the PCI bus, which is where the card is probably going to be installed, has a frequency of 133 MHz, and a maximum data throughput of 133 MB/s
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"The art of Engineering is knowing what you can safely ignore." -Dr. H. Hess

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:24 pm Post subject:

Yeh, one bottleneck after another. If toilets were like computers, you'd have to shit in the yard.

I'd ask the NIC guy but he got laid off same time I did and moved to California.
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