kapone32 The Realtak 2.5 is not bad at all. I have it on my board and it works great.

Particle You could just add in your own Ethernet card. A gigabit Intel card costs like $10.



If you're using copper, you shouldn't be using onboard anyway. It's an invitation to buy a new motherboard if you ever get hit by a significant electrical storm. Add-in cards tend to take the hit and save the system unless it's a really-hard hit.

It seems Realtek has been improving their Ethernet silicon for a while now, still now sure I'm ready to trust them. It took years for me to accept them for audio and that was mostly because finding an on-board made by someone else is almost impossible and Windows having proper support for real sound cards died a long time ago.Yes, I could add a card but I'm guessing there is a price to be paid for that Realtek Ethernet. I don't want to pay for something I won't be using. I have never had a storm take out an on-board Ethernet controller or motherboard. My brother, who at the time I lived in the same apartment building as had an on-board Ethernet controller taken by a storm but the board was still usable. It was directly connected to his cable modem which is where the spike came in. Storm took the cable modem too but it was a leased one so the cable company replaced it.