Intel PWLA8391GT PRO/1000 GT PCI Network Adapter

My old eMachines T1150 has no built-in NIC. Two cheap 10/100 NICs were not recognized by Solaris 10 x86 (actually, Solaris Nevada b69). I finally decide to buy the Intel PWLA8391GT PRO/1000 GT PCI NIC since I read it used the Solaris e1000g driver. Sure enough, it worked for me. My PC has a 1.3GHz Celeron, 384MB RAM, and two 40GB 5400 RPM disks, so the throughput on the NIC is probably limited by the hardware around it. Thought I’d pass this info along in case there are Solaris folks out there looking for compatible PCI NICs. I believe there’s a PCIe version available too.

I needed a Gigabit NIC card for our Windows 2003 Server and I ended up choosing this one. Great price for a great card. Installation was a snap. I installed the drivers first, then powered down the server and installed the card. After rebooting the server it found the drivers and went right to work. Been performing perfectly ever since. Thanks Intel for making another great network card.

In my family we have a network which has grown and grown. Our LAN has become increasingly significant to us. We recently upgraded our primary switch from fast ethernet (10 / 100 ethernet) to gigabit ethernet (10 / 100 / 1000 ethernet).

The majority of our older PC’s couldn’t support gigabit ethernet. We were using the old ethernet capability which came with the PC’s (the integrated ethernet on the PC motherboard). These older PC’s supported fast ethernet, which is slower than gigabit ethernet.

When looking for a new gigabit card to upgrade these PC’s, my goal was not only gigabit speed, but also overall performance, then price.

There is no shortage of inexpensive ethernet cards, not only here at Amazon, but at other online stores (who shall remain unnamed . Few had the high reviews of this intel ethernet NIC, and few seemed to claim performance enhancing technology.

The price for this card is slightly higher than other gigabit cards, but we have noticed a performance improvement even when using fast ethernet (the old ethernet). These cards can offload some of the overhead your PC CPU would normally handle. The result is an improved internet and LAN experience.

These are small PCI OEM cards. At first I thought they were missing status LED’s as there were holes in the back where LED’s usually sit. It turns out the LED’s are flat on the card and shine through the holes in the metal on the back.

I downloaded drivers for this card from the intel.com website before installing them. It was necessary to have drivers for this card before switching over to it on Windows XP Home. Windows Vista immediately installed drivers on boot, as did the Windows 7 RC.

While I don’t use Linux, this card has extensive Linux support, great Windows support, and is overall a well built ethernet device. I would purchase again in the future is new cards were needed.

I got this NIC around the holidays because one of my desktop’s onboard NIC was acting funny. So I purchased a few, and after I installed it into my desktops, it worked immediately. The computers are all dual boot workstations with Windows XP Pro and Kubuntu 7.04, and all computers worked with both OSs right away. However, I chose to install current drivers to get full access. It works well with my gigabit switch, where the limitation is due only to other computers with 10/100 NIC. Because I am used to comps with 10/100 cards, I see a significant difference in transfer rate between computers with this card installed!

Pros: Great performance, ease of installation, supports a great variety of operating systems, support for Gigabit.

Cons: Could be cheaper.

Good card, good price.

Is NOT compatible with Windows7 – Beta or RC1

I needed a network card for my Dell Dimension 4500 that works with Vista. The INTEL PRO 1000 GT PCI filled the requirement. Received the item promptly, and I physically installed it easily. I rebooted to Vista. The drivers installed automatically and I was off and surfing in Vista! I also still use Windows XP with the same fine results. I would recommend this card to anyone needing a newer card for Vista.

I replaced my cheapie gigabit nics (Realtek chipset) with the Intel nics and the difference is like night and day under Linux. 50MB/s file transfers are now the norm. You can go cheapie on most other computer parts but don’t do it with nics under Linux.

I’m satisfied with the performance with this product. I went from transfer times of 15 to 20 mins to 6 to 8 mins on files of 3.5 gigs and higher.

This card was installed on a ghz network, the machine is a p3 1.0 ghz & 1.0 gig ram – (I think that it’s 800 fsb)

the only down side is the software that came with the card. It adds a routine to your boot sequence which adds time to your boot. I don’t mind because this is not my main system but it might be an annoyance if this is your primary system.

Other than that this a worth while investment to increase transfer speeds.