TL DR: Over 100 Mbps performance improvement, Intel objectively faster, more important in servers and routing equipment than client devices.Īs others have said, it's more about support than performance, but Intel wins on both fronts.

Other than the previously mentioned jumbo-frames-inhibiting-power-management issue with e1000e I've never had a problem with any of them.ĭisclaimer: I work for Intel, but not on anything related to this topic. Are people even aware they are different? That 'Intel' doesn't tell the whole story? I kind of doubt it.įWIW: I have systems with e1000e, igb, and Realtek NICs. igb (the more featureful and expensive big brother of e1000e) is better in this regard. Enable jumbo frames with e1000e and your CPU's power management will be seriously limited (see where I tried to fix it). Intel has multiple lines of 1-Gigabit ethernet controllers (e.g., e1000e, igb) and they are different. The fact that the whole conservation is about brands, rather than particular chips, should cast some doubt on the matter. The recent article linked in the earlier thread makes some claims about Realtek performance being worse in terms of CPU usage, but it's not what I would consider a robust experiment.Įven assuming that Intel's ethernet controllers are superior to Realtek's, it would be nice to quantify that in some way if for no other reason than to allow people to make informed cost:benefit choices.

I feel like the Intel vs Realtek comparisons are nothing more than old wives tales in the absence of data. My system does not benefit much from the addition of the Intel NIC’s over the internal RealTek NIC’s and was not worth the additional cost of $60.00 for two NICs The Intel NIC does offload CPU usage, but not by much - in total CPU usage, the difference is ~3.5% In this thread most of the discussion revolved around Intel vs Realtek NICs, with the conventional wisdom being that Intel NICs are vastly superior to Realtek.Ĭan someone point to some actual experimental data? I've searched and cannot find anything except some forum posts:

Intel or realtek wireless lan driver