Hardware Review
Trendnet TEG-ECTX
Many PC users now are content with the NIC cards built into their motherboards. I've been looking at PCI-E based network cards and I wondered if there is a substantial benefit on using a PCI-E network card instead of the onboard NICs that motherboards come standard with. We took a look at Trendnet's Gigabit PCI Express Adapter, TEG-ECTX. We would like to thank the Trendnet team for making this review possible.
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The TEG-ECTX looks to be a standard network card that uses the newer generation PCI-E interface. For connectivity, the TEG-ECTX can support 10/100/1000Mbps connections via an Auto-MDIX WAN port. Because it uses the motherboard's high speed PCI Express Bus architecture, its Full-Duplex technology can generate data rates of up to 2Gbps. The TEG-ECTX also has Jumbo Frame support which further enhances network throughput performance. Refer below for a more detailed specification on the TEG-ECTX:
| # 1 x 10/100/1000Mbps Auto-MDIX WAN port |
| # PCI Express 1.0a compliant |
| # Incorporates Advanced Configuration Power Management Interface (ACPI) 2.0 |
| # Wake-On-LAN (WOL) |
| # TCP segmentation / large send offload |
| # IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging and IEEE 802.1p Layer 2 priority tagging |
| # IEEE 802.3x full-duplex Flow Control |
| # Microsoft NDIS5 (IP, TCP, UDP) checksum off-load |
| # SNMP v1 supported |
| # Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) 2.1 and Remote Program Load (RPL) |
| # Jumbo Frames up to 7K |
| # Intuitive cable diagnostic utility |
| # 5-year limited warranty |
For testing, we will be comparing the TEG-ECTX with the onboard NIC card on our EVGA 680i SLI motherboard and see which interface will boast a faster download speed over our gigabit network. We will be using an episode of Bleach encoded in DIVX format for our download file. It is roughly at about 700MB and is stored in our NAS device. We tested the onboaerd 680i NIC with single connectivity as well as the dual connectivity feature via the connection teaming by using the nVidia network manager. We wanted to test the TEG-ECTX under an OS X. Leopard, but we couldn't get the onboard NIC card on our EVGA 680i SLI to work with our hackintosh. So we just decided to just use our Vista Ultimate 64-bit install. And the chart below shows our results.
You really can see the difference in performance with the TEG-ECTX's performance at Gigabit speed. The onboard gigabit card on our 680i wasn't too bad but compared to the TEG-ECTX, adding a separate NIC card has its advantages. Though an extra NIC card will occupy a PCI or one of you PCIe slots, we think it still is a good buy. We really like the overall performance of Trendnet's TEG-ECTX compared to our onboard NIC. If you do a lot of streaming over your network, a gigabit network connection is now a must have. There is just no comparing to the performance you get from upgrading from a 10/100 card to a gigabit network card. We give the TEG-ECTX a score of 8 out of 10 and our recommendation.
Pros:
PCI-E performance
Faster than on board NICs
Very good price at just about $45
Cons:
Takes up a PCI-E slot
Manufacturer Link:
