Server PCI network card with two Gigabit Ethernet ports

Some time ago—to be precise, at the end of February—a seller from one of the AliExpress stores contacted me and asked me to write about his product.
Writing about it wasn't difficult, and the device caught my interest in its own right. At least, at the time I had an idea for how I might use it.
Anyway, if you'd like to read about a fairly well-known item, read on :)

I usually choose the products I review myself, so I don't know why the seller suggested this particular one. But I figured that a network card like this could actually come in handy, so why not write about it? The seller did suggest a couple more products afterward, but I wasn't interested in them and declined.
By the way, the seller has lots of different network cards, which might come in handy.

The review title says this is a network card with a PCI interface. That's right—no letters have been left off the end; this is an old-standard card. These days, motherboards hardly even have slots like this.

I originally bought it for a motherboard with just one slot, and that slot was PCI, so it was a perfect fit. I'll explain at the very end what I ordered it for and why I didn't end up using it. For now, I'll do what I promised the seller and tell you about his product.

The card arrived in a box bearing the name of a company I'd never heard of. The name was everywhere: on the packaging, in the manual, even on the tape.


The package is simple, though I can't think of what else you could include with a network card.
1. Network adapter
2. Bracket for installation in low-profile cases.
3. Manual
4. Driver CD
5. Packaging.


The manual is nothing special, but the bracket is useful. I sometimes build computers in low-profile cases.


The network card is low-profile too, but it's quite long. In my opinion, they could easily have made it about 20% shorter.
The card has a PCI x32 connector and looks very neat. I'd like to say it looks like a name-brand product, but the thing is, I'm 99% sure this actually is a name-brand card—possibly Intel, possibly Compaq, but definitely a branded one.
Most likely, there are large stocks of these cards, and they're gradually selling them off.


The card arrived in excellent condition. I won't claim it's new—it may have been cleaned up well—but it could well be new.


As advertised, the card has two Ethernet ports.


A closer look at the board markings. You can see some minor scuffs here, as well as the manufacturer's mark, “Mic,” though I'm not familiar with that marking.


The card is built around an 82546EB chip, which, according to its description, is a Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller.
The description also says it supports PCI/PCI-X buses. In this case, we have the basic version: PCI.
I saw no point in removing the heatsink. First, I know what's underneath it, and second, it's firmly glued on.


A few photos of the components installed on the board.
Since the board supports booting a computer over the network (PXE), it has a flash memory chip: a 39F020 with a capacity of 2 Mbit (256 KB).


There’s nothing else to inspect on the board, so let’s move on to the tests.
Testing was done on a computer running Windows 7 Pro x64, with a Core™2 Duo E4500 processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H motherboard.
Windows recognized the adapter automatically; there was nothing to install.


The driver was from 2008, though. And I wouldn’t say it has many settings; usually there are more.


That’s when I remembered that the package included a driver CD.
That would be fine, except finding the right driver isn’t as easy as it might seem at first. In the end, I simply started the driver update and pointed Windows to the disc. Windows found something on it—I didn’t even figure out where—and installed it.


Things looked better: the drivers went from May 2008 to September 2008 :)
There were a few more settings, too.


With no other options, I went to the manufacturer’s website (Intel) and downloaded the latest version available, dated 2016. O_O


As it turned out, the driver version stayed the same, but the Intel network connections software was added, unlocking all the features this network card supports.
I can’t say I understand even half of what this card can do, but it’s always nice to have more settings.
By the way, PXE/RPL boot is supported independently on each port. At least, two PXE options appear when the computer boots.
For anyone who doesn’t know what this is, here’s how I understand it. A computer can boot from a hard drive, CD, or flash drive. But if you set up a server on the network for network booting, the computer doesn’t need a hard drive at all; everything happens over the network.
Click the screenshot to enlarge.


Here I should add a small caveat.
The card’s chip can work with 33 MHz and 66 MHz PCI buses.
I couldn’t find out what frequency the PCI bus on my motherboard runs at, and that’s very important for the test.
A 33 MHz bus has a maximum bandwidth of 133 MB/s, while a 66 MHz bus has twice that. Those figures don’t account for bus overhead, so the real throughput is closer to 100 MB/s. That means that with a 33 MHz bus, the card can’t possibly deliver more than one gigabit across both ports combined.


To test it, I created a 1 GB RAM disk on the computer (the free version wouldn’t let me make it any larger). Then I connected it directly to another computer with a built-in Gigabit Ethernet card and shared the RAM disk over the network.
Why didn’t I use the more appropriate Iperf? Because the plan was to use it as a network drive, so that’s what I tested.
1. RAM disk speed.
2. Network drive performance.


I ran this test just out of curiosity. I don't think it's particularly useful; I was simply curious.


I ran the following tests from the computer with the card under review installed.
Access speed to the computer I used for the previous test, working with a shared folder mapped as a network drive. I didn't create a RAM disk here, since the computer has an SSD installed.
By the way, you can see that upload and download speeds differ; in the test from the second computer, the speeds switched places.


Next, I tested both network ports working at the same time.
The setup was as follows:
The test was run from the computer with the dual-port card installed.
The first computer was connected through a USB 3.0–GbLan adapter, and the test used the computer's hard drive.
The second computer was connected directly to the onboard network card.
At first glance, the combined speed looks good, but if you look closely at the network card utilization, you'll see that the total load is about 96%.
That was the case throughout the test. Sometimes one port's utilization rose to 0–80%, but the total never exceeded 100%.
This means the network card's chip hit the PCI bus limit, so both ports will never run at full speed simultaneously with this motherboard.


Next, I tested each card separately.
With the auxiliary computer connected directly to the onboard card, network card utilization easily reached 96%, while data transfer speeds reached 111 MB/s.


With the USB 3.0–GbLan adapter, peak speed was the same, even a little higher, but the graph was more erratic.
You could say I tested the USB 3.0 adapter along the way too :)


At the very beginning, I mentioned that I planned to use this card. I once wrote a review of my mini “server.” I planned to install this network card in it. The motherboard in there is different now—or rather, it's the one that used to be in there, an Intel GLY2—but that doesn't matter.
I decided not to install the card for two reasons.
1. The card was too tall to fit, although that's fixable: I could install it horizontally.
2. By the time the order arrived and the network card had been waiting for its review, my plans had changed considerably, and there was no longer any point in installing it in that computer.
So, in the end, I didn't find a use for it. It'll probably just sit in a drawer as a keepsake, though I may find a use for it somewhere.


I generally like all sorts of pretty “gadgets.” The board at the top left served in my computer for a long time, until a thunderstorm killed it.
The second card also worked for a long time, but eventually I needed the slots for something else, so I switched to the onboard network card. I didn't notice any difference :)


This time, I won't go over the pros and cons; I'll just give my opinion.
I won't criticize this network card. It works fine and the build quality is excellent, but to put it gently, it's a little outdated.
Its drawback is the old PCI interface. It can only run at full speed if the bus is clocked at 66 MHz, but it's usually 33 MHz, so you won't get more than 1 Gbit/s in total. Built-in network cards nowadays perform just as well as the one reviewed here.
Overall, it's a decent card, but if you need one, I think it's easier and better to look for it on Avito or OLX. I'm sure you can find one there.

While looking for my first 3COM card, I came across all sorts of PCI cards. Maybe someone will find them interesting :)

The product was provided by the store for review.